New World Order
by JKrlin
Summary: Ruby Rose and Negan have a lot in common. Both are enrolling in Beacon Academy. Both share a love in cool-looking and over-the-top weapons. Both want to be a hero, someone who fought for what was right and protected people who couldn't protect themselves. Both want to save the world. The only difference is that they have some very divergent ideas on how the world should be saved.
1. Welcome To Beacon - Part 1

Ruby had been so excited to be attending Beacon Academy. For one, she got to attend Beacon right alongside her older sister, so Yang couldn't keep lording the fact that she got accepted over Ruby's head anymore. For another, Ruby had been enrolled two years early! And the second Ruby stepped onto campus, she saw all of those weapons the students were carrying! There was that rocket launcher with the katana, that lance attached with a flamethrower, that briefcase that just had to be a minigun kept in incognito mode…

But then Yang had left to hang out with her friends – which basically meant she had left her little sister in the dust to go make out with her boyfriend. Then that dust became actual Dust which Ruby had accidentally sneezed into an explosion, Weiss Schnee chewed her out for it, and Ruby found herself all alone in the middle of the main road to Beacon.

Well, there was Jaune, but he seemed to be just as socially awkward as Ruby was. They were making small talk until there was an inevitable lull in their conversation. After Ruby had made a little joke about Jaune's "smooth" introduction of himself, neither of them knew what to say next.

"So," Ruby drawled out in indecision until a bout of inspiration struck her, "I got this thing." She whipped out Crescent Rose in all of her crimson, metallic beauty. Jaune jumped back, startled.

"W-Whoa!" he stuttered as he regained his bearings. He eyed Crescent Rose in slight bemusement "I-Is that a scythe."

Ruby nodded resolutely. "It's also a –"

"Ho-ly shit!"

Both Ruby and Jaune jumped at the swear. Other students that were ambling pass them looked at something behind the pair. Ruby and Jaune followed their gazes to see someone walking toward them. He wore some slim-fitting jeans and dark, obsidian boots. There was a red scarf draped around his neck, and it was tucked under the collar of his black leathery jacket.

Ruby's eyes drifted to the stranger's gloved hands. He was holding a… bat? Was his weapon a bat? The grip had a wooden texture, but Grimm can tear apart wood with only a flick of a finger. It may have just been a khaki paint. What else was on that weapon? Ruby couldn't see since the bat was resting on the stranger's shoulder, and the other half of the bat was hidden behind his head. Maybe the bat had a – Wait a second. Ruby's eyes drifted to the stranger's face. His black hair was slicked back, and his eyes were staring intently on Crescent Rose, just like how Ruby was staring at his weapon.

"Hot-diggity-dog!" Once the boy was in arm's reach of Ruby and Jaune, he took one final step and leaned his upper body over Ruby's weapon, admiring it. "Is that a fucking scythe?" His eyes followed down the snath and to the blade. "That's also a fucking gun?"

The awe the stranger was showing made Ruby smile. She was thankful she wasn't the only one on campus crazy about weapons. She raised Crescent Rose with a flourish, showing it off. "Yup. It's also a customized, high-impact sniper rifle."

Jaune looked confused. "A what?"

Ruby pulled the bolt back for emphasis. "Like he said, it's also a gun," she clarified plainly.

"No shit," the jacket guy said. "I knew huntsmen and huntresses were supposed to be badasses, but this thing is just fucking awesome!" He extended a hand, curling up his fingers, and waggled his index finger, inches away from Crescent Rose. "Can I touch it?"

Now it was Ruby who looked confused. "What?"

"Can I touch it?" he repeated, still staring at the scythe. "Just a little bit. Come on, it's a scythe that shoots sniper rifle rounds. I gotta touch it. Promise I won't hurt it."

"Uh," Ruby glanced between her weapon and the stranger. He still had that enthusiastic smile. His bright, white teeth were exposed and reflecting off some of the sunlight. "Sure, I guess." He proceeded to trace his finger along the blade's underside to the very tip. He brought it back up to the barrel part of the rifle, swirling invisible circles against the metal along the way.

"You take good care of this girl, don't you?"

"Of course I do!" Ruby affirmed. She pulled her scythe away from the jacketed boy to caress the weapon for herself, pushing away imaginary grime off of it. "I'm kind of a dork when it comes to weapons. I guess I went a little overboard in designing Crescent Rose, but I make sure she stays up and running."

Jaune spoke up. "Wait, you made that?"

"Of course. All students at Signal forge their own weapons."

The jacketed boy let out an impressed whistled. "Hot damn. Made it all by your lonesome, straight from scratch?"

Ruby thought about Uncle Qrow. "Well, my uncle helped me a little bit, and he taught me how to use a scythe to begin with, but putting all the nuts and bolts together – that was all me."

The jacketed boy chuckled. "Boy, aren't you the little badass, whipping out that giant sniper rifling scythe like it's nothing."

Ruby winced at the swear and pouted. "I'm not that little."

"Heh. Could've fooled me. Looks like you need more milk in your diet, missy."

The young Rose perked up at that last comment, placing her hands on her hips as she took a haughty disposition. "As a matter of fact, I do drink milk. I'll be as big and tall as you, sooner than you might think." And, now that he was done leaning over and eyeballing Crescent Rose, Ruby realized that the stranger was at least a head and a half taller than Ruby. "Oh, and I'm Ruby. This is Jaune. Who are you?"

If possible, the bat-boy's smile grew even wider. Leaning on one foot, he looked between Jaune and Ruby, as if considering who he should be speaking directly to, before settling on Ruby. "Well, hello there," he greeted, bowing slightly. "I'm Negan." Then he pulled the bat off his shoulder to show it off to the newly enrolled Hunters-in-training.

Up close, Ruby could confirm that the bat was definitely made of wood. The texture looked just right, and Ruby's spent enough time sorting through materials in Forgery class to recognize the difference between wood and metal… partly because she once accidentally set fire to the Forgery classroom because she mishandled a piece of wood, but Ruby digressed. There was also barbed wire wrapped around the upper half of the bat. Ruby could tell that Negan's weapon was specially cared for, too, what with how shiny and nice-smelling it was.

"And this," Negan continued, eyeing his bat with the same look of adoration as he had worn when examining Crescent Rose, "is Lucille, and she… is… awesome."

"Uh, nice," Jaune commented a bit hesitantly. "Looks like it's homemade. Right?"

"You can bet your blonde balls that she's homemade, Jauny boy," Negan responded. Jaune's lips quivered as he raised an eyebrow, processing Negan's words. Ruby might have done the same thing, but she was too busy looking at and examining the bat.

"It looks like it's in really good condition," Ruby observed, "but doesn't the barbed wire get in the way when killing Grimm? You know, like, if it gets stuck on the fur and flesh and –" Ruby raised her head to meet Negan's eyes. Instead, she found herself looking down the barrel of a handgun.

"Boom!" Negan hollered. Ruby and Jaune hopped back on reflex. Ruby wrapped her arms protectively around Crescent Rose, and Jaune threw up his arms in a desperate move of self-defense. Negan started chortling heartily, waving the bat and the gun around. "Oh, you should see the looks on your faces! Gotta be pissing your pants, am I right?"

"Jeez, man." Jaune had a hand pressed against his chest, lightly gasping for air. "Warn a guy next time. Gun safety's important."

"Aw, come on, Jauny boy. Don't be such a pussy. I'm just busting your balls, is all." Negan, smirking at Jaune, twirled the gun with his finger through the trigger guard. "And I call this one Little Jeffery."

Negan looked to Ruby, who was at an impasse as to whether start panting like Jaune to steady her breath or to meet Negan's grin with one of her own. Awkward laughter tended to be the better option compared to awkward silence, in Ruby's experience.

"Grimm can't do shit when Lucille's getting it on with one," Negan explained, patting the bat with the pistol. "And if they get too wily, Little Jeffery comes in to ruin the fun." He pretended to fire the gun again, pulling it up to simulate the recoil, before putting it back in its holster. "Lucille gets jealous whenever Little Jeffery jumps in, though, so he only comes out during special occasions, or when things are too fucked for Lucille to have time to be jealous."

Ruby opted for the grin. "Well, it sounds like you take good care of both Lucille and Little Jeffery. What about you, Jaune? What's your weapon?"

Jaune presented his broadsword and a collapsible shield. It was a simple combination, hardly with any innovations added or made to it, but you can never go wrong with the classics. Ruby told him as much.

Negan wasn't as impressed, probably because Jaune fumbled with the collapsible shield and nearly fell over. "Do you even know how to use those things?"

"I do! I've had… plenty of practice."

Ruby was starting to doubt Jaune. His response was a little too defensive, but maybe it was just first-day-at-school jitters. "Well," Ruby said, "we're about to get a lot of practice with all of our weapons for the next few years!" Ruby internally berated herself for saying something so generic. She was just asking for another awkward silence. She had to think of something quick, something that the boys could really respond to, or –

"Practice?" Negan shook his head, holding Lucille with both of his hands behind his back. "We're supposed to be badass Huntsmen, killing Grimm and saving the world and all that. Right? Academy or not, you don't 'practice' at saving the world. You just do it." Negan swung Lucille around, rotating his whole body 360 degrees along with the bat. "You just swing and hope for the best. Know what I'm saying?"

Unconsciously, Ruby found herself nodding with Negan. "Yeah, I think so. It shouldn't be so hard to just do the right thing, right?"

"Exactly!" Negan extended his index finger again, poking Ruby on her nose. "Oh, you are just adorable."

Ruby slapped the Negan's hand away before scratching her nose. "What?"

"I'm sorry, but I just can't take you seriously." Negan pulled at his chin with his free hand, twirling Lucille around in his other hand with his wrist. "You're totting a scythe that's a gun that's gotta be twice your size, attending the best damn Huntsman Academy on Remnant, and you're wearing a fucking dress. I mean, are Grimm supposed to be wowed by your little fashion statement, or is there a secret weapon you're keeping under the dress that's even more badass than the scythe?"

"It's a combat skirt," Ruby defended her choice of attire.

"What, you mean like for gladiators?" Negan squinted his eyes, scrutinizing Ruby's face. "Hell, how old even are you? Thirteen, fourteen? You some sort of child prodigy to get into Beacon so young?"

And this was exactly the type of thing Ruby wanted to avoid, of people calling her out for being accepted into Beacon two years early. "Fifteen, actually," Ruby meekly corrected Negan, "but I'm not much of a prodigy. It was more of a… lucky break that got me here. Right place, right time – that kind of thing." Ruby took a step back from Negan. It didn't look like he cared much for personal space.

Negan removed his hand from his chin, revealing his toothy smile. "Well, we all have to start somewhere." Negan backed away, hopefully catching on to how uncomfortable he was making Ruby feel. "Speaking of, any of you two know where first-years are supposed to be heading towards for orientation? Been wandering aimlessly for fifteen, twenty minutes tops without a clue as to where the hell I'm supposed to go."

"That's a good question," Ruby said. "Any ideas, Jaune?"

"Wait, you're asking me?" The blonde scratched the back of his head. "I was following you. I thought you knew where we were supposed to be going."

"Nope! I'm just about as lost as you are."

"Oh… Uh, maybe there's a directory somewhere? A recognizable landmark? Any signs the staff might have put up to guide new students to orientation?"

Ruby shrugged. "I didn't see anything like that when we left the ship."

Negan let out an obnoxious sigh. "You know what? I have an idea. How about you and Jauny boy go ask someone where we're supposed to go, and I'll go take a piss." Negan clapped his hands. "Ready team? And, break!" With that final exclamation, Negan strutted away.

"So," Jaune said as he and Ruby watched Negan disappear around a corner, "he was… loud."

"Yeah," Ruby agreed, "and he has a dirty mouth on him." Some of Yang's friends and even Yang herself said bad things sometimes, but they were never as bad or casual as Negan with their language. "Still, I like him!"

"You're just saying that because he liked your scythe," Jaune teased.

"No I –" Ruby realized she was still hugging Crescent Rose close to her chest. "M-Maybe. I really like weapons, okay! Not everyone appreciates the work that goes into making and developing them." Ruby stroked her baby as she would have stroked Zwei, tenderly and with unbashful affection. "At least Negan understands."

"He was being kinda weird about it, though, you know?" Jaune mimicked Negan, bringing a finger up to poke at the air. "'Can I touch it?' Seriously, who asks something like that?"

"Our weapons are extensions of ourselves," Ruby said, repeating the same thing she had said to Yang earlier. "They're a part of us as Huntsmen and Huntresses. Even with Aura and Semblances, without quality weapons to work in tandem with our Semblances, then we're practically useless." Once Ruby felt Crescent Rose was reasonably cuddled with, she stored it behind her back. "Maybe if you had a little more practice with your own weapons, you'd understand better."

"I do practice with them! I know how they work! I, uh, understand plenty!"

"I guess we'll see if you really 'understand plenty when combat classes start, won't we?" Ruby was no longer defensive and was only teasing Jaune with her own small smile now.

Indiscriminate yelling suddenly caught Ruby and Jaune's attention. It was a girl's voice, Ruby recognized. They watched as Negan reappeared around the corner he had previously left from. There was a jump in his step as he practically skipped toward Jaune and Ruby.

"Word of note," Negan said quietly once he was in hearing distance, "the restrooms around here aren't color-coded. You have to look at the stick figures on the doors to figure out which one's which."

"You went inside the girls' restroom?" Jaune asked in disbelief. "Was that what that screaming was about?"

"Well, I want to say that was me literally fucking a sweetheart's brains out and then subsequently fucking them back in, and she was just trying to get all of her faculties straight afterward, but I don't want to come off as crass, now do I?"

Ruby had to take a second to process Negan's words, and she pulled her hood over to hide her pinkish face once she was done. Yeah, Yang's friends had nothing on Negan's vocabulary. Not even Merle, and Yang had told her about how Merle knew a lot of inappropriate jokes about Faunus.

"Of course you don't," Ruby heard Jaune mutter quietly. "Why would anyone want to think you were crass of all things?"

"But that's not my point," Negan continued. "My point is that I found out where the hell we're supposed to be going: the amphitheater, and I know the directions to get us there, too." Negan stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Ruby and Jaune. With the two of them at Negan's sides, he ushered them down the stone path. "Let's go, classmates! Don't want to be late on our first day of school!"

Despite the growing heat in Ruby's cheeks, she managed to keep her head up and watch her step as Negan pushed her and Jaune onward. Her eyes caught Lucille, her barbed end dangerously close to Ruby. Negan's hand was resting on Ruby's shoulder, so the bat was sagging in the air right in front of her.

Negan shook Ruby, startling her. "Hey, no need to be afraid of Lucille, Ruby. She's a dirty girl, but she knows her manners."

Ruby just smiled and nodded politely. Negan may have not been the first person she expected to strike a rapport with, but he was definitely an interesting one.


	2. Welcome To Beacon - Part 2

Killing Grimm and making friends at Beacon turned out to be easier than Ruby had first thought! Aside from nearly getting mauled by a Deathstalker and a Nevermore, and Weiss's reluctance at being combat partners, initiation went along pretty smoothly, all things considered.

So, as Headmaster Ozpin greeted Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang as they approached him on the stage of the amphitheater, Ruby only let a tiny grin sprout on her face instead of the squealing smile she had been wearing earlier. The high of successfully becoming a certified student of Beacon Academy had worn off. The nervous paranoia had returned. It had to be the fact that Ruby was in front of what had to be hundreds and hundreds of strangers that caused it. They were all older Huntsmen-in-training, judging her and her new teammates, and it was making Ruby feel more and more small than she really was.

"The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces," Ozpin said aloud, bringing Ruby's mind back to the matter at hand. "From this day forward, you will work together as Team RWBY. Led by… Ruby Rose."

Ruby's jaw dropped. As the polite applause erupted from the audience, she could only stare absently at Ozpin. She barely acknowledged Yang's bear hug and proud exclamation of, "I'm so proud of you!"

Why – WHY was Ruby chosen as leader? What did she know about leading? She barely even knew how to tie her own shoes. Killing Grimm and making friends was one thing – well, two things, technically – but being responsible and in charge of three other people was something the fifteen-year-old did not feel up-to-snuff about.

At least Ruby didn't have long to think about her new position. Team RWBY was quickly ushered off the stage. They took their designated seats and watched as the next batch of Beacon students stepped up.

"Philip Vert," Ozpin began.

Ruby put all thoughts about being a leader to the side to focus on Yang's boyfriend marching proudly on the stage. His hair looked a little ruffled, an odd sight in since he was almost as obsessed about hair and looks as Yang. The black eyepatch on his left eye was still there, though. It had been a while since Ruby last saw Philip, so at least that hasn't changed. Maybe the transition to being a leader and a student at Beacon won't be so bad with some familiar faces around.

"Caesar Martinez," Ozpin continued.

Another one of Yang's friends got into Beacon. He had a blue cap turned backwards on his head and a red bandana wrapped around his neck, both of which appearing kinda out of place when you considered the formal setting they were in. Ruby didn't know Martinez very well, but she still cheered on for him regardless.

"Merle Peletier Dixon."

And there was Merle, strutting across the stage like he owned it. He even had on his person part of his signature weapon: the metal covering that he wore over his amputated right hand. Ruby would have loved to take a closer look at it, ask Merle more questions about the story behind the weapon, but Yang doesn't like her spending time with him. Maybe Ruby will get the opportunity to interrogate Merle later down the line at Beacon.

"And Rowan Woodbury."

Ruby didn't recognize her. She did recognize that those were deer antlers sticking out of her head, though. There were already people around her whispering about a Faunus joining Beacon, making Ruby sigh disappointedly. Why couldn't people just get along?

"You retrieved the black king pieces," Ozpin said to the newly formed team, "and so you will be known as Team PMPR, led by Philip Vert."

Team Pompadour? That was a fitting name, especially considering the way Philip prepped his hair during one of Signal's dances. Ruby joined in the celebratory clapping, her sister shouting her head off. Ruby was pretty sure Philip winked back at her. Pretty sure. You can never really tell whether he was winking or blinking with that eye patch.

After Team PMPR walked off, a familiar-looking boy with a familiar-looking bat practically hopped onto the stage. It was like the giddiness in him never ran out. Ruby had to admit that she was a little jealous of that.

"Negan Winchester," Ozpin announced.

Negan, licking his lips, waved at the crowd. He spotted Ruby, and the two shared a mutually congratulatory nod to each other.

"Neopolitan Bonnan."

Oh, now this particular smirking Huntress-in-training looked interesting. Part of her hair was a cute pink color, matching well with some of the clothes she had on, but what made Ruby glance twice was the folded-up umbrella in her hand. She nonchalantly swung it around like Negan did with Lucille. It's gotta be something special when your weapon outwardly appears as something as common and typically non-threatening as an umbrella.

"Whitley Schnee."

Schnee? Ruby looked to Weiss, but she just had this disinterested look that was trying to fight a smile. Ruby looked back to the stage and saw a male clone of Weiss with shorter hair walk forward. They couldn't be twins, though. He was shorter and looked more about Ruby's age, but he had that same gait, the same posture that rich people on TV and like Weiss had, that showed off his proud outlook on life.

"And, last but not least, Morgan Tuskon Logan Junior."

Wait, Ruby knew that name. Tuskon Logan was the owner of a bookstore somewhere down in Vale. This must be his son, though Ruby couldn't see much of a resemblance. Morgan had darker skin, probably from his mom.

"You four managed to retrieve the white king pieces, and from this day forth, you will be known as Team NBLS."

Team Nebulous. That team name was a bit… ominous.

"You will be led by… Negan Winchester."

Negan looked at Ruby again. As the crowd applauded, he winked at her. Ruby raised a thumbs-up in return. Negan seemed like he knew things, about life in general, so maybe he could give her a few tips on being a leader later.

Yang punched her shoulder. "Hey, Ruby, did that Negan guy wink at who I think he winked at, with that who being my adorable little sister?"

Ruby groaned, annoyed. "Yang –"

"So you haven't just started making friends. You're already talking it up with some boys, too, huh?"

"Yang."

"Alright, alright, I'll lay off for now, fearless leader."

At least she didn't say she'd "Yang off for now." Ruby took some direly needed solace in that.

On the stage, Negan spread his arms and faced the audience, stepping in front of Ozpin. "Today," Negan yelled at the top of his lungs, "has been a productive damn day!" Then he turned his back to the giant crowd, brought his arms around Neopolitan, and pressed his lips against hers. She returned in kind, putting her arms around his neck. Some in the audience started cheering and whistling. Morgan and Whitley gave each other an unsure glance as they inched away from the slobbering couple.

A pair of hands tried to shield Ruby's eyes. Ruby squirmed in an attempt to set herself free. "What are you doing, Yang?!"

"You aren't old enough to see this!"

"I see you kiss Philip all the time! It's gross, but –"

"That's different."

"No it's not." Ruby managed to throw Yang's hands off of her by the wrists. Ruby stared at her sister darkly, getting only a cheeky smirk in response.

Negan soon separated himself from Neopolitan. He faced the audience one more time. "Welcome to a brand new beginning, you sorry sacks of shit!"

"Indeed," Ozpin seemed to agree. Ruby titled her head at him. She wouldn't have expected the Headmaster of Beacon to be so accepting of foul language. Glynda Goodwitch at the side of the stage, on the other hand, looked like she was ready to kill someone. Ruby wasn't sure if it was Negan or Ozpin. "And there will be plenty of time for celebration during dinner."

After giving an exaggerated bow to Ozpin, Negan pulled Morgan and Neopolitan into a forced hug, dragging them away like he dragged Jaune and Ruby the day before. He tried to get Whitley in on the hug, but the Schnee held his chin high and kept his distance.

"Classes tomorrow will start at nine o'clock sharp," were Ozpin's final parting words, "but for tonight, congratulations on making it into Beacon Academy."

All of the first-year teams were escorted to the dining hall. Professor Goodwitch had explained that it was usually reserved for the more senior students or visiting benefactors of the Academy, and that the freshmen would be typically eating at the regular cafeteria, but Ruby wasn't complaining. She just gratefully took the opportunity to see what lay in her future here at Beacon.

Team RWBY was seated all on one side at one of the long rows of dining tables. Shiny diamond-like chandeliers hung them, and the chairs Ruby and her peers were seated on were at least twice as tall as her. The walls were supported by columns that had these little statues at the top of them. They were angelic figures, each with their own weapon drawn toward the glass ceiling.

Surrounded by such dazzling architecture, Ruby felt like a princess being escorted to her own personal ball.

"Is your sister okay?" Ruby could faintly hear Blake ask.

"She's fine," Yang answered.

"She's drooling and hasn't touched her food at all."

"Do you see all those weapons those statues are holding? Ruby must be in heaven right now, looking at all of them."

That was a bad habit she had to overcome, Ruby thought to herself as she used her sleeve to wipe away the saliva off her chin. The zoning out when looking at weapons, that is. It happened back at Signal all the time whenever a guest Huntsman came to speak to her class, and it was always embarrassing whenever a classmate called her out for it.

Weiss, sitting on Ruby's left, scoffed at her, turning away from her partner in distaste as she picked at her food. "Honestly, if you end up suffering in dueling class because you send too much time looking at the other student's weapons rather than focusing on the combat itself, I swear…."

A small chuckle distracted Weiss from continuing her rant. "Not happy with your partner, sister? Why am I not surprised?"

Whitley Schnee walked up from Ruby's right. He had the half-closed eyes and smooth smile look Jaune tried to go for yesterday, only Whitley's presentation was a lot more natural. He even gently grasped Ruby's hand to give it a polite kiss. Ruby's feeling of being a princess returned tenfold.

"Please accept my apologies on behalf of Weiss for her disrespectful behavior," his velvety voice secreted as he sat himself to Ruby's right. "She always took after our older sister; harsh and abrasive before allowing someone to prove their worth."

Before Weiss could spout something in her defense, Negan appeared out of nowhere and slapped a hand against Whitley's back. All of Whitley's body rattled against his chair as Negan shook him. "Hold the fucking phone, partner. You're saying that you have two super hot sisters?"

"Excuse me?!" Weiss screeched, threatening to rise from her seat and confront Negan up close.

"I suppose I am," Whitley, readjusting his tie and collar once his partner plopped onto the seat beside him, said in response to Negan's question, "but I can assure you that Winter is even less likely to accept your companionship than Weiss is."

"Best two out of three works for me." Negan leaned against the table edge to look pass Whitley. He wiggled his eyebrows at an aghast Weiss, but then he noticed Ruby staring back at him. "Ruby Rose! Congrads on becoming initiated!"

"You, too, Negan," Ruby waved. Yang swerved her arm around Weiss to punch Ruby's elbow.

"Come on, Rubes, introduce your new boyfriend to your big sister."

Ruby frowned and gave her own punch back at Yang. "He's not my boyfriend, Yang. He's just a friend."

"Now, Ruby," Yang lectured playfully, "I didn't lie to you when I told you Philip was my boyfriend, did I?"

"Yes you did! You made me lie to dad and tell him you two weren't dating exactly because you lied to me about that!"

Yang grinned sheepishly, likely reminiscing of the day dad and Philip first met, with Yang as the mediator and Ruby as a reluctant observer. It wasn't the friendliest of introductions from what Ruby remembered. "Well, you weren't ready to know what dating was back then."

"That's what you always say!"

"I'm your older sister. Of course I'm going to keep saying that."

Negan whistled. Accusingly, he pointed a finger at Ruby and said, "Wait a second. Ruby, you have a super hot sister, and you didn't mention her when we first met?"

Ruby turned her frown to Negan, who was draping his arm around Whitley, who was trying to inch away from Negan to eat his food in peace. "It's not like we were talking about super hot sisters at the time," Ruby said. Then she looked straight at the untouched food on her plate, surprised that she had to say "super hot sisters" in a sentence in any context.

"Excuse me, but have you seen Lucille?" Negan took out the bat from behind his back, raising it to the air. "She is Little Jeffery's super hot sister, so I think you have a little explaining to do."

"But," Ruby mumbled meekly, "Lucille's a bat and Jeffery's a gun, so how can they even be related…"

"And Crescent Rose is a gun and a scythe. Did I accuse you of making a bastard hybrid weapon out of a farming tool and a killing machine?" Negan slammed his palm against the table, startling everyone nearby. "No! I said it was fucking awesome, and you know what else is fucking awesome? Super hot sisters, and you said jack about yours!"

Whitley, peppering a napkin against his lips, raised an eyebrow at his partner. "Why do you have this obsession with attractive siblings? Aren't you already in a relationship with Neo?"

"Oh, Neo's a sweet gal," Negan said with a wistful smile, relaxing, "but it's more of a casual thing between us. She and I have had some good times, but I'm still looking for that special someone out there, you know?"

"And that someone has to be a," Whitley darted his eyes away in hesitation for a split second, "super hot sister?"

"She doesn't have to be, but it wouldn't hurt. Speaking of," Negan leaned over Whitley to nod towards Weiss and Yang, "it is an absolute pleasure to be meeting you two ladies. I'm Negan."

"Hello!" Yang joyfully replied, though her eyes were suspiciously scanning Negan from head to toe. "I'm Yang. Nice scarf."

"How did a barbarian like you manage to enroll into Beacon?" Weiss questioned with an edge, crossing her arms. Ruby couldn't help but grimace at her. Negan said a lot of weird things, but that didn't make him a "barbarian."

"Please, sister," Whitley spoke up before Ruby could. "Watch your tongue." Ruby was starting to like him more and more by the minute.

"Watch my tongue?" Weiss trained her glare on her brother. "Your partner has done nothing but say obscenities the entire time he's been here!"

"He has, but he is my partner," Whitley emphasized. "Don't you remember what father and Winter said about respecting our partners?"

"And what respect has your partner shown me?"

Whitley shrugged. "He believes that you are highly attractive."

"That does not excuse his foul language!"

As Whitley and Weiss at Ruby's sides went back and forth in their argument, Ruby ducked her head and noticed Negan pull up the empty chair next to him and set Lucille on it. Ruby used to do the same thing with Crescent Rose back home until dad banned having weapons at the dinner table. Negan caught her staring again and gave her another one of his toothy grins.

"My dirty girl deserves to be treated like a fair lady every now and then," Negan practically purred before digging into his food.

Ruby realized that the next two seats down from Lucille were empty. "Where's the rest of your team?" Ruby asked.

"Off calling their dads," Negan said with a half-full mouth, "telling them the good news."

"Calling their dads?" Ruby repeated, confused. "Shouldn't they have been watching them on TV?" She and Yang always stayed up late together once every year to watch the annual Beacon Acceptance Ceremony, seeing each successful team be initiated into the infamous Huntsman Academy. They were always filmed and shown live on every news channel.

"I said the same thing," Negan replied. "I don't know much about Morgan. He said his dad works late nights so he wouldn't have been watching the ceremony. I know Neo's dad, though, and he's a holy fuck fucking fuckedy fuck bum, so I know for a fact that he wasn't watching the ceremony."

Ruby had to wince a little again at the use of curse words. She wasn't used to hearing someone say so many, even in movies. "Do you really have to swear all the time?"

"Jeez, I don't know Ruby. Do you have to wear a dress and a cloak with a hood all the time?"

Pulling at the aforementioned pieces of clothing, Ruby gave a sidelong look at Negan. "Uh, yes?"

"Yeah?" Negan downed the drink in his fancy wine glass in one fast gulp. "And why's that?"

"Because… I like them?"

"Excato-fucking-mundo!"

Weiss suddenly slammed her hands against the tablecloth, shaking the entire table. "That's it!" She stood up, looking at Negan with a ferocity Ruby didn't think was possible. "You! Negan Winchester! Refrain from being so liberal with your words or I will report you to the staff for inappropriate behavior!"

"You're going to report me?" Negan tauntingly questioned with a snicker. "Were you not there during the ceremony when I called all of you 'sorry sacks of shit' and Professor Ozpin didn't even bat an eyelash?"

"Ozpin might be tolerant of your actions," Weiss admitted, "but I'm confident Glynda Goodwitch certainly isn't!"

Yang chuckled as she swallowed something. Ruby could hear her mutter to Blake, "Free dinner, and a free show with Ice Queen to-boot? I love it here already." Blake said nothing in return.

"Weiss," Ruby said, moving her hand to gently pull Weiss down to her seat, "maybe you should relax."

"I agree," Whitley said. "You really do take after Winter too much, sister."

"Oh," Weiss said mockingly, "I'm sorry for being a responsible sister and trying to get an obviously bad influence away from my younger brother!"

When the words "younger brother" left Weiss's mouth, Whitley seemed to freeze in place, staring at his sister with an a flat look. Weiss was waiting for a response from him, and Ruby was tempted to nudge Whitley to get him out of his apparent trance. However, Whitely abruptly raised himself to Weiss's height, giving her the same look of disapproval she had given Negan.

"I suppose you haven't changed at all, Weiss," Whitley said quietly. He faced Ruby and bowed slightly. "I wish you and your teammates the best of luck in your time here in Beacon, Ruby Rose." Then he turned his back to Team RWBY and stalked off.

Ruby looked back and forth between the Schnees, divided on what she should do. Should she comfort Weiss, who looked utterly as lost as Ruby was when Ruby was appointed as leader of Team RWBY? Should Ruby try to convince Whitley to stick around and to play nice with Weiss? Or should Ruby just ignore this entire debacle and finally start eating her food? She wasn't very good at resolving arguments between friends, and her food was getting cold, so…

Negan laughed softly as he picked up his plate and Whitley's forgotten dish. "And the plot thickens," he said. He gave a clumsy salute to Ruby before following after Whitley.

Som Negan decided to support his partner. Ruby decided to follow his example and do the same to Weiss, but Weiss just gave her the cold shoulder, no pun intended, and refused to react to Ruby's prodding. Frustrated at her lack of success, Ruby gave up and finally started eating the fancy dish before her.

Then, when Ruby's eyes drifted to look down the dining table at the other students, she saw that Lucille was still sitting in a chair. Negan must have forgotten about her when he went after Whitley.

Once dinner was over and the teams were told to find their dorms, Ruby picked up Lucille. She made sure to handle her with the same care she gave to her own weapon. It was too late to just wander aimlessly in the hopes of finding Negan, so Ruby planned on returning Lucille when classes start tomorrow.

It looked like Negan already hit it off with his partner. Ruby should be able to get some advice on how to get along with a Schnee so easily once she returned Lucille back to him.


	3. Welcome To Beacon - Part 3

"You have been burdened with a daunting responsibility, Ruby," Professor Ozpin said to Ruby, his back turned to her. "I advise you take some time to think about how you will uphold it."

As Ozpin sauntered down the corridor, Ruby thought over his words. He was… calm. That was the word for it. He was calm, like how he was during his opening speech on Ruby's first day at Beacon. He said he's made a lot of mistakes in the past, but he still seemed comfortable in his position as the guy in charge of an entire Academy.

To be at least partly a good leader, Ruby ought to be more calm and comfortable, or appear as such outwardly to her team. She should have known better. Uncle Qrow was an awesome teacher, and he was always calm and comfortable when teaching her how to use Crescent Rose. Ruby was usually an excitable person, but, much like with trying to make friends with strangers, Ruby was trying too hard in being a supportive and inspiring leader to Weiss, Yang, and Blake.

Meandering to the cafeteria for lunch, Ruby spotted Weiss through a doorway. The Ice Queen – and Ruby should probably stop calling her Ice Queen in her head, like how she should stop thinking of Jaune as Vomit Boy – was speaking to Professor Port on a balcony overlooking the Academy.

What Ruby wanted to do was to approach her partner and try to make amends to her on the spot. Instead, Ruby sneakily inched away from the balcony and resumed her trek to the lunchroom. From what Ruby has observed from her encounters with Schnees, they enjoyed their space and distance from others. Until Weiss grew comfortable enough around Ruby, the Rose felt she should abide by Weiss's desires.

Ruby twirled Lucille in her hand as she reached her destination. She hadn't see Negan during Professor Port's class. His team and Ruby's must have different first periods. Hopefully she'll find him before his dueling class today.

The cafeteria looked far more average and uninteresting than the dining hall, but it was just as wide and expansive, more crowded. At her first glance, Ruby failed to spot Yang or Blake in the crowd. Shrugging, Ruby decided to get her tray of food and find them afterward.

However, once she got her lunch, the familiar incessant cursing of words pulled her to one lunch table in particular.

"I'm telling you," Negan was saying loudly while munching his food with no concern for who heard him, "Oobleck has to be on drugs to be moving that fucking fast. He has to be."

"There is such a thing as coffee, Negan," Whitley responded, trying hard once again to focus solely on his meal than be bothered by his partner's antics. "You would be surprised of the more outrageous effects it has on its addicts."

"Bullshit it's coffee that's making him so damn hyper." Negan turned to their other two teammates. "You guys believe your fearless leader, right?"

The Neopolitan girl, who Ruby guessed was nicknamed Neo, only had this amused smirk and said nothing. Morgan's smile looked more honest, like he wasn't taking the conversation too seriously but wanted to humor Negan anyway. "Well," Morgan said, "Professor Oobleck is a teacher at, and I quote, 'the best damn Huntsman Academy on Remnant.' If the Academy is supposed to the best, why would its teachers have to rely on illegal drugs to teach its students?"

"Because the illegal drugs are what make the Academy the best," Negan declared conspiratorially, like he was revealing the most important secret in the universe. "The drugs are what make the Huntsmen that graduate here so damn good. Don't you remember how Ozpin looked out of it during his first speech the other day? Must have been too fucking high or something to really care about his new prospective students."

Ruby dropped her tray on Team NBLS's table, making her presence known. "Hello, Team NBLS!" She hopped onto Negan and Whitely's side, the pair of partners waving or nodding to her. "Nice to see you guys again." She turned to the other half of the team. "And nice to meet you two! I'm Ruby! And you're Neo and Morgan, right?"

Neo nodded silently with a smile. Morgan raised a curious eyebrow at Ruby. "Yeah. Yeah, we are. Are you from Vale? I think I recognize you from somewhere."

"No, I'm from Patch," Ruby clarified, "but I visit Vale a lot. I've been to Tuskon's Book Trade a few times. Maybe you've seen me from there?" It's odd that Ruby didn't recognize Morgan, though.

"Maybe, but –" Neo nudged her partner and flipped her hands out, making a serious of motions and shapes with them. "Oh, right. You were the Signal Academy student who helped stop a robbery last week."

That made more sense. A few other random students recognized Ruby from the last week's news, too. "That's who I was, yeah." Ruby turned to Negan, who was in the middle of slurping a long rice noddle into his mouth from his bowl of soup. "By the way, Negan, you forgot about your, uh," Ruby lost some of her resolve but pressed on through, "dirty girl last night." She held Lucille up for all of Team NBLS to lay their eyes on.

Negan's face morphed into one of complete flabbergasted astonishment. "Seriously?" Ruby held it forward for him to take. He took it after a minute or two of just staring at the bat. "Well, fuck me sideways. I never do that. I guess helping out my partner's existential Oedipus complex was a little bit of a distraction." Whitley was glaring at Negan now – what was an Oedipus complex, Ruby wondered – and Negan turned to him. "All jokes aside, it doesn't matter what your sisters say. You are rad as hell on the fucking battlefield. You keep up doing what you're doing, I swear to you, no one is gonna screw with you for being an entitled prick. No sir."

Were people giving Whitley a hard time because he was a Schnee, like how Blake was kinda doing with Weiss? Ruby wanted to ask, along with asking some other questions (like is Neo mute? Is Morgan a Faunus?), but Negan turned back to her with his classic smile now donning on his face.

"Thanks, Ruby," he said. "Did you take care of her all night and all morning for me?"

"Yup!" Ruby unashamedly answered as Negan examined all of Lucille's parts close to his eyes.

"Were you gentle? Were you kind?"

"Of course! She means a lot to you. I can tell. I would never hurt a perfectly good weapon like her!"

"I know, but did you treat her like a lady?" Negan waggled his fingers under the base of Lucille. "Did you pet her little pussy like a lady?"

Awkward laughter. Ruby went for the awkward laughter rather than let her mouth gape at Negan's choice of words. At least she wasn't alone in her frustrations with those words. Morgan slapped a hand against his forehead, obviously exasperated, and Whitely had a sour look of irritation on him. Neo joined Ruby in her laughter, only Neo's quiet chuckles came naturally and without any janky bumps.

Then Negan bellowed giant guffaws with that loud, strong voice of his. He slapped Ruby's knee that surprisingly left a notable sting there. "I'm just screwing around, man," Negan said as he joshed Ruby with his shoulder. "A baseball bat doesn't have a pussy!"

He kept laughing, like the joke was funnier than anyone in his immediate vicinity thought it was, and he wanted to keep laughing anyway. Ruby's small chuckles were only done out of nervous politeness. Her and Morgan's eyes met, and a brief look of understanding was passed between them. Whitley slid himself ever so slightly away from Negan, and Neo was happily eating her ice cream co– Wait a second! Where did Neo get an ice cream cone? The lunch ladies weren't selling any, and there weren't any dispensers that Ruby could see!

Eventually, Negan's sniggers trickled down in volume, but Ruby could still hear people laughing loudly and obnoxiously. Ruby followed the noise and saw another freshman team, Team CRDL, hovering over a distant table.

They were harassing a Faunus girl. Cardin was pulling at one of her rabbit ears, he and his team laughing over the girl's pleads to stop the during it all.

Bullies. They were being nothing but time-wasting, inconsiderate, no-good bullies. Ruby didn't run into bullies too often back at Signal. If she was being honest, Yang probably scared them away before they could really bother her, but they did bother some of Ruby's friends when she, Yang, or Philip weren't around.

Sometimes, Ruby wondered if she had paid more attention to the things around her, maybe she could have done something to help Carl. Then maybe he wouldn't have been peer pressured into something he shouldn't have done. He'd still be in Signal.

Ruby recognized one of Team CRDL's members. It was Russel Thrush. He went to Signal, too. He was in Yang's graduating class, and he was also one of the bullies that had gotten Carl expelled.

After another pull of the ear from Cardin and another pained cry from the Faunus, Ruby stood up from her seat. She wanted to go over there, pull Crescent Rose out, and trap Russel underneath the blade so Ruby could give him a stern talking-to. She was about to do just that, but Negan stood up at the same time Ruby did, and he was looking at CRDL with a similar look of distaste as Ruby's.

As a mischievous grin took over Negan, he prompted, "Ruby, how's about a team-leader bonding session?" He bobbed his head toward the bullies. In return, Ruby gave him a determined nod.

While the two of them marched on with purpose, Team NBLS stayed behind, for whatever reason. Ruby ignored that for now. In the past, she herself did nothing while watching people hassle Faunus, in the hallways of Signal between classes or on random street corners in Vale. Ruby had her own troubles to worry about, she had always told herself. But, if she wanted to be a Huntress and truly help people, then she had to start somewhere. She had to be more proactive than how she was before.

"Oh, you must be joking," Negan said in a low enough tone so that only Ruby could hear him. "Hey, Ruby, think Crescent Rose can come in and axe the space between Cardin and the girl? You can go for the girl. I'll take on Cardin."

Ruby remembered from the ceremony that Negan's last name was Winchester, and that it was also Cardin's last name. They must be related, but like Ruby and Yang, the two Winchesters didn't have too much of a resemblance.

"Sure," Ruby replied. In one swift motion, she whipped her scythe out – because even though they were supposed to leave their weapons in their locker rooms, there was no way she was going to leave her baby all alone in a dank, foreign locker for long – and aimed for Cardin's wrist. Ruby guessed correctly that Cardin's combat instincts kicked in just in time for him to dodge the blade.

Cardin and the rabbit Faunus backed away from each other. The Faunus almost instantaneously started walking away in the other direction. Russel tried to cut her off until Ruby brought Crescent Rose around to block his path. "I don't think so," Ruby said with an edge. Russel must have recognized her, too, because his eyes widened and he didn't move any further when the rest of team tried to push him forward.

"Who the hell –" Cardin barked just as Negan appeared behind him.

"My cousin!" Cardin nearly jumped right out of his armor when Negan got him into a one-sided hug. "Damn! How long has it been? Six? Six, seven months? Hell, doesn't matter. Feels too fucking long either way!"

Cardin was shaking. "N-N-N-N-N-N-Negan?" Cardin stuttered. His hands were twitching, likely debating whether or not to try pulling Negan's arm off him. "What are you –"

"Weren't you paying any attention last night? I got accepted!" Negan cheered way too cheerfully. "Listen, next time we see your dad, you gotta remind me to thank him for settling up my transcripts. Couldn't have done it without him! Speaking of, how have things been on your end?"

One of team CRDL – the shorter one. Was his name Dove? – spoke up heatedly. "Cardin, who is he supposed to be?"

Negan held up a finger at Dove. "Don't be rude, friend. My cousin and I are having a conversation."

Glaring at his teammate, Cardin hissed, "Shut. Up." Cardin's eyes met Ruby's. Ruby's scowl probably didn't scare him much, but it sure felt satisfying to when the twitchy Cardin turned away first to face Negan. "Who's this? Another squeeze?" And what was a "squeeze" supposed to be?

"Another?" Negan removed his arm from Cardin to slap the back of his head. Cardin rubbed the damage as Negan continued speaking. "Just because I tell you one time that it's happy hour at the pussy bar and Cardin eats for free, it doesn't mean that you get to disrespect everyone who happens to have a pussy, especially one that has a badass scythe that could have easily taken off your hand."

Ruby cocked the rifle part of her weapon, aimed right at Russel's stomach. "It's also a gun," she deadpanned.

"A sexy scythe with a ginormous gun," Negan went on. He tapped a finger against Cardin's cheek, as if teasing a baby wrapped in his arms. "You remember what your dad and I taught you before we went our separate ways?" Cardin seemed to be receding back into his panicky state, curling his arms and head against his torso, so Negan backhanded Cardin's ear to get him to pay more attention. "Hey," Negan spoke quietly, but audibly for Ruby and CRDL to hear, "speak when you're spoken to. That was one of the things. What else did we fucking teach you?"

Negan's words always made Ruby flinch, but this was the first time Ruby actually felt unsettled by the tone Negan was using. It wasn't like dad's or Uncle Qrow's tones when they were legitimately disappointed in Yang for another one of her harebrained schemes, or when one of the stricter teachers at Signal towered over Ruby with an intense reprimand about something she had horribly messed up on. Negan was being a little… legitimately scary. It was the way his mouth was barring his teeth, the way his eyes were daring Cardin to not do as he was told that made his tone so intimidating.

Ruby almost couldn't believe the unnerving Negan she was watching now was the same jolly Negan she's so used to seeing.

"Don't be an asshole," Cardin forced out of his lips, his entire body shaking, "unless it's a means to an end, and don't mess with the new world order. I remember those. Trust me. I remember those lessons."

Negan's demeanor turned a 180. He stopped leaning over Cardin like a predator and grinned joyfully. "Oh, so you do remember! That's good. Now don't fucking forget them. My next question: what's your fucking endgame with fucking around with that smoking hot Faunus girl?" Negan punched Cardin's arm, and Ruby was willing to bet it was only halfway a playful punch and more so an actual punch. "Because the Winchesters are a lot of fucking things, but one of the last motherfucking things that we're going to be called are racists. Understand?"

Well, at least Ruby could claim Negan was fair and equal as far as Faunus-human relations go.

Russel scoffed as he crossed his arms. He gave an unimpressed look to Negan. "I'm sorry, but are you a part of this team?" Russel asked. "Or the rabbit's team? No? Then why don't mind your own fucking business." Russel was about to say something more, but Ruby poked an accusing finger against his chest.

"Do you even know her name?" Ruby snarled. "Why were you even picking on her in the first place?"

Russel met Ruby's glare head-on. "She's a rabbit freak. Maybe you should go hang out with her. It seems like you attract all sorts of freaks, Rose."

Ruby wanted to punch Russel's stupid face off of his stupid face so much during that moment. She probably would have tried right then and there, if not for the fact that someone came behind Russel and pulled him back by the shoulder.

It was Philip, flashing his dashing smile that often distracted Ruby from his eye patch. "Whoa there, Ruby, Russel," he said to in an attempt to disarm the situation. "It's only the first day here. I don't think we should be getting into fights this early."

"Russel was bullying a Faunus!" Ruby exclaimed in her defense.

"And if that's true," Philip calmly said, "we can report him to the staff instead of drawing our weapons on each other." He pushed Crescent Rose down so that it was aimed at the floor instead of Russel. Frowning, Ruby obliged and sheathed her weapon. Philip was always too nice to stay mad at for long. He liked to play peace maker whenever Ruby and Yang got into their little fights. "Russel, is what Ruby said true?"

"Heh, maybe," Russel said smugly.

"Yes you were!" Ruby shouted. "You and your whole team were bullying her!" The other two members of CRDL were silently glowering at her now. Cardin, on the other hand, was still in his shivering state. "Tell him, Negan!"

Negan's smile in terms of self-assurance could give Philip a run for his money. "Well, hello there. I don't believe we've met."

Philip matched Negan' friendly countenance and outstretched a hand. "Philip Vert."

The two shook. "Negan Winchester. I'm the leader for Team NBLS, Ruby's the leader for Team RWBY, and my cousin Cardin here is the leader for Teamn CRDL. I wanted the three of us to go on a team-leader bonding session, but then Russel had to go and fuck things up for us by bothering some cute Faunus chick, calling her names, pulling at her hair and shit."

Philip nodded in acknowledgement at Negan's account of what just happened. "Really. So, Russel, are what Negan here and Ruby saying true?"

Russel was about to answer, but Cardin clumsily cut him off. "Yes, yes it's true," Cardin blurted out. "Russel was bothering another student, and, as his partner and team leader, I'll be discussing this issue with him, alone, just between us. If the Faunus girl was really hurt by what he did, she'll report it to the staff herself." He glared at his other teammates, daring them to say anything otherwise. When they did not object, Cardin looked to Negan. "Guess we'll have to reschedule the bonding session, huh?"

"We most certainly will," Negan said with a roll of satisfaction bouncing off his tongue. Cardin immediately stood up and ushered his team away. Philip appeared ready to chase after them, but he seemed to think better of it and turned back to Ruby.

She had to wonder how Russel and Philip managed to be friends. Philip was so nice, and Russel was so mean. Even if Merle was also a little racist and also Philip's friend, it just didn't make any sense. Merle never got any of Ruby's friends expelled or bullied anyone, human or Faunus. At least, to her knowledge.

"I saw Yang earlier," Philip announced. "She and the rest of your team are eating on the other side of the cafeteria. They were looking for you, but –"

"– but Yang sweet-talked you into trying to find me instead," Ruby finished for him. There was a small hint of sympathy in Ruby's voice. After years of scams and pranks at Signal, Yang has found many ways to get others to do her bidding one way or another.

"That's right, but now that I've found you, I've got to head back to my own team." Philip gave a casual salute to Negan. "It was nice to meet you, Negan. Maybe I'll join the next team-leader bonding session you and Ruby decide to have."

"Maybe," Negan agreed easily. "Maybe." Negan waved his own hand as Philip made his exit. Once he was lost to the crowd. Negan turned around in his seat to face Ruby. "That guy supposed to be Yang's boyfriend?"

"Yeah," Ruby confirmed. "He's pretty cool, right?"

"Sure is. I bet they look good together."

To Ruby's minor confusion, Negan didn't say anything more after. She was expecting some another bout of complimenting Ruby's "super hot sister," or a joke about Philip's eye patch. Instead, Negan sat where he was, looking off vaguely into the distance. He looked like he was contemplating about something. Was he thinking about Cardin's behavior? Philip's first impression? Russel's stupid attitude?

Uh, just thinking about Russel turned Ruby's mood foul. Ruby decided to put him at the farthest back of her head. After all, before taking this excursion with those CRDL bullies, Ruby had a mission to take care of; namely, having some one-on-one time with Negan.

With that in mind, Ruby dashed to the seat directly across from Negan and chirped up, "Anyway! I was wondering if I could ask you a favor."

Slowly, Negan rotated his head fully to face Ruby. "Well, you did do right by my girl, so I guess it's only fair that I do something for you in return."

"Great! So, huh," Ruby cleared her throat so her words wouldn't come out in a jumbled mess, "you and Whitley seem to get along pretty well."

"Fuck yeah we do! He's like the little brother I should have always had. The Schnees don't fucking know what they're fucking wasting by being sore pricks and fucking him over." Negan paused for a moment. "Well, I guess Whitley's also a sore prick in his own way, but he knows how to bust some balls like us, and unlike his sister."

"That's kinda what I wanted to talk about," Ruby clarified. "You see, Weiss and I are kinda having issues with her not trusting me to be a good leader and me not even sure how to be a good leader to begin with." Ruby giggled to herself to relief some of her shame. "Any words of advice? I mean, Whitley carries himself so fancily like Weiss does, but he, uh, knows how to 'bust balls.' You know what I mean?"

Negan stroked his chin. If he had a beard, Ruby was betting he would always be stroking it whenever he talked with people. "It's like I said. Whitley's rad as hell. Don't know why his family can't recognize that, especially his sisters. If I had to guess, it's probably their ages that causes problems."

"Their age?"

"Yeah. Whitley's even younger than you. He's only thirteen." Ruby was taken slightly back from that revelation. She's heard of child prodigies, but Whitley must really be something to enroll in Beacon at the same age Ruby was at when she was finally allowed to personally slay wild Grimm on Patch. "He's says he's seen how his sisters grew up, letting the sticks in their asses get all crotchety in there or too busy sucking assholes with small dicks."

Whitley most likely did not say that word for word, Ruby was sure. It still made her duck her head in embarrassment, though.

"Since she's older, I'm betting Weiss has a feel for how the world works," Negan explained. "She's got her own little ideas in her head on who to fuck, why to fuck, and how to fuck, but those ideas are so fucking stuck and sticky, like wet on water. She knows who, why, and how Whitley ought to fuck, and she doesn't give a shit if Whitley wants to find out the who, why, and how for his own fucking self."

"You're saying Weiss is too controlling of a person." Ruby could have guessed that as well. Weiss wanted to control the team instead of let Ruby even attempt it. "How can I try getting on friendlier terms with her?"

Negan's grin morphed into something rascally. "If she's one of those tsundere types, you can try screwing her. Then she'll open up a lot of things for you."

If possible, Ruby's face became even redder. Needing to do something to alleviate her growing warmness, she punched Negan in the shoulder. "I'm looking for real, serious advice, Negan! I don't know how to be a leader! Like, at all!"

"Then, I don't know," Negan shrugged, "practice at it."

Ruby's frown deepened. "If we shouldn't have to practice at saving the world, why should we have to practice at being good leaders?"

Negan opened his mouth to speak. Then, he decided not to and shut his mouth. The hand fell to his lap like a stone. "Fair point. You sure you haven't met Morgan before today? Asshole knows how to make fair points more than he has to." At Ruby's pointed glare, Negan slurped his tongue along his lips. "Okay, okay. I can see that our pretty, petty Rose is really hankering for some leadership tips. So, here's one: let Weiss be the leader."

Ruby's frown softened into a more rotund uncertainty. "Let Weiss be –"

"She's got some man-sized balls for a classy lady, right? She wants to be the bread winner, to wear the pants in the family, right? I say give her the pants, give her the job, and let her bake that fucking bread from the shit coming out of her own ass."

Mulling over the suggestion, Ruby chewed on her lip and glanced at Negan with askance. "You want me to let Weiss be leader for a day, and watch her fail, and then I step in and show her that I am a good leader? That's what you're saying, aren't you? That's your advice? To humiliate my partner? I'm trying to earn brownie points, not worsen our relationship even more."

Feigning offense, Negan rested his palm over his heart. "I'm not telling you to bully the Ice Princess. I'm telling you to give her what she wants. If she finds out she isn't up to par, then that's her fault. Then you get what you want, stepping in as the caring, comforting leader to bring the Princess back from the brink."

"But –" Ruby stopped herself short and sighed. She felt that Negan was really trying to help in his own special way, but it wasn't working out for Ruby. Not yet, at least. "I don't even know if I want to be team leader. I know Professor Ozpin must have had a reason for making me one, but I want to become a Huntress to just help people, not to tell people what to do."

"Then what was that shit that went down between you and green Mohawk?" Negan countered, gesturing vaguely in the direction CRDL had taken off in. "You seemed pretty willing to tell him not to bully that Faunus bunny."

"That's not the same thing and you know it."

"It's absolutely the same damn thing." Negan, unblinkingly staring at Ruby, propped his elbow on the table as he slanted his body toward her. "That's what being a leader is. Telling the flock and sheep what the fuck they can, cannot, and have to do if they want to keep breathing. Sometimes you're telling assholes to stop jerking each other off for their own good, and sometimes you're telling a pasty-ass bitch to try being on top for once to remind her why you're the one who's always on top."

God, Negan's wordings were starting to get harder to translate into more sensible words. From what information Ruby was able to gather, Negan was saying that being a leader was hard, and sometimes you had to be harsh as the leader, especially if you want to keep being the leader.

"What if I don't want to be an… asshole?" Ruby crossed her fingers, hoping that Yang was not nearby and would never be nearby to hear her say such swears. "What if I want to be nice and come across as actually trying to help instead of coming across as a… meanie." Meanie might have sounded immature, but it rolled off her tongue a lot better than asshole did. "You got Cardin to stop trying to hurt that Faunus, but, no offense, you were acting like a meanie, and I guess I was acting a little like a meanie to Russel, too. But I don't want to be a meanie to Weiss. I want us to be friends."

Negan adopted that contemplating posture again, only now he was staring directly into Ruby's eyes. Ruby, her fists clenched and planted against the table, stared right back, willing him to understand her plight and to give her some advice she could really use and agree with.

Finally, Negan took the caressing hand off his face and pointed his finger at the younger girl. "Concessions," he said with a deliberate muster. Ruby might have gotten excited at Negan's firm and confident proclamation, but she wasn't sure what concession met. Vocabulary was never her strong suit.

"What's a concession?" Ruby asked.

"Humoring people. Giving them a chance. Playing the game that they want to play." Negan extended his arm to poke Ruby on the nose again. Ruby, quite sick of her own family for doing that for years, stopped him by catching his hand first and holding it in place. "Giving them what they want," Negan finished.

"But I don't know what I want," Ruby repeated.

"Yes, you do," Negan insisted. He set Lucille down on the table. He pulled Ruby's hands into his and placed all four down on top of the bat. Ruby wasn't sure where Negan was going with this prayer-like movement, but she let him anyway. "I'm betting we both want the same things out of life. You know what I want? To save the world from Grimm. You know what else I want? To be a kickass leader and partner for my team. Am I wrong?"

"In this case, no, you're not," Ruby granted, "but isn't saving the world and being a good partner or leader, if they can, what most people want anyway?"

"Not for the Schnees," Negan said. "Whitley and Weiss aren't here for any altruistic reasons. They're here because everyone in the family is a fuckedy fucking bum, and they're trying to get pass their angsty teenage rebellion phase. What's the best way piss off those bums? Go trotting far away from Atlas and showing that they can handle themselves in the big, bad world without any sheltering or spoiling. It's not about saving the world for them. It's about proving that they could save the world if they really wanted to."

That probably explains why Whitley got so uppity last night. He didn't want to be thought of as Weiss's younger brother, like how Weiss didn't want to be working under what she thinks is a childish leader. They want to be able to stand on their own ground.

With her new understanding, Ruby asked, "If Whitley wants to be his own person, why is he so accepting of you as his leader?"

"It's because of our concessions." Negan tugged at his and Ruby's intertwined fingers. "He's giving me the chance to be a leader. He is allowing me the opportunity to prove my worth." With their hands still connected, Negan pulled so that he and Ruby were eye-to-eye and leaning their upper bodies over the table. "And while he's giving me my chance, I'm giving him the chance to prove he isn't a racist, bigoted, preppy, wannabe huntsman preteen who's only looking for a good fuck here in Beacon.

"And you know what the best part is?" Negan tugged at their fingers again. Even if Ruby was still processing Negan's advice, his smile was starting to infect her own. "Whitley's still likes to act like a fucking rich spoilsport because he was raised that way, and I still like being an annoying asshole because I'm fucking awesome, but even with all that, we're still totally cool! Do you know what that means?"

Realization dawned upon Ruby. "There's still a good chance Weiss and I can be totally cool friends, too." Ruby might not have known Negan long and might have only traded a few words with Whitley, but by just looking at them, she can tell they're like night and day. Despite that contrast, they seemed to be taking their new partnership status in stride.

Calm and comfortable. Negan seemed calm and very comfortable with where he is in life, both as a partner and as a leader.

"Concessions, Ruby," Negan said with a resolute shake. He and Ruby were nearly touching each other's noses after all of Negan's tugs. Ruby was too preoccupied on ideas on how to be calm and comfortable around Weiss to be bothered by it. "Concessions are just another rule, just another step in saving the world."

"Sounds like it," Ruby nodded, one end of her mouth curling up higher than the other. "Oh, Weiss is going to be so surprised and excited when I tell her that she can be team leader for a while! Then she'll see I'm not too young and immature to be here! Thanks a lot for the advice, Negan." Ruby gave her own tug at their hands to emphasis her gratitude. "Really. Thank you."

"I always aim to please," Negan said, "especially cute gals like you, Rubes."

Ruby wanted to give Negan a hug. He seemed like a physical-contact type of person, and she thought that he deserved it.

But when Ruby's eyes blinked, she opened them to see Negan no longer holding her hands. Instead, his whole body was sent flying across the cafeteria. Ruby watched as he glided over students' heads before disappearing into the faceless mob of students when he fell from the air.

Ruby turned to see Yang standing near where Negan was sitting. Yang's eyes were their Semblance-fueled red, her fists clenched tightly and held out in front of her. Philip was right behind her. He had a hand on his hip and was rubbing his forehead in consternation.

"Sorry, Ruby," Philip said, but Ruby was more focused on her older sister.

"Yang!" Ruby cried. "Why did you just punch Negan in the face!"

The blonde brawler turned her red eyes on her sister. "I saw him, Ruby. He was about to kiss you!"

"What?" Ruby gasped, her confusion distracting her from the flush in her face. "No he wasn't. We were just talking."

"Then why was his face so close to yours, huh?!"

"What does that matter? Besides, I'm just trying to make a good friend, just like you wanted me to."

Yang's rage seemed to dial down as her eyes shifted back to purple. "Ruby, I don't know if Negan's the most ideal friend you could be making."

Before Ruby could argue why Negan could be her new best friend, he made his return. He stepped out of the horde of students, strutting as he so often did, and clapped his hands to make his presence known.

"Goddamn!" he shrieked. From behind Yang, he couldn't see her eyes flare again. "You just punched me over a distance of sixty-seventy odd feet with over five seconds of air time, Ruby's super hot sister. I like that in a woman."

Yang punched Negan again, even farther this time. Philip was trying to stifle a chuckle, and Ruby buried her face into her palms.

Ruby didn't care what her older sister said. Negan gave her some much-needed advice. He was a good one in Ruby's book.


	4. Passing School Days - Part 1

"That's dumb."

"Coming from the Huntress in a freakin' skirt."

"A combat skirt! It's called a combat skirt, Russel! A combat skirt is not dumb, but not naming your weapon definitely is!"

"They're just a pair of daggers, Rose. What do you want me to call them? Mister and Missus McTwoKnives? Because that's what they are, a pair of fancy kitchen knives."

"But they're not everyday kitchen knives! They're like twice the size, and they've got those revolving chambers for Dust like Weiss has for her weapon. Those things help make your daggers unique, and special. They need a good name for them."

"Why don't you come up with the name, Rose, since you keep bringing it up?"

"I only bring it up because –"

"Because you're a weapon freak that uses a giant freaking scythe as a weapon, that's why."

Ruby's hands grasped the sides of her head. She pulled at her hair in vexation. "Why do you always complain about Crescent Rose? Why do you always have to complain about Crescent Rose?"

"Everyone at Signal knows that Professor Branwen played favorites with you and your sister. He's the only reason your crazy weapon works."

"That's not – Okay, maybe Uncle Qrow did help me out a lot, but I still worked really hard on my baby by myself. It was me who put together the scope, the magnifying glass in the scope, the custom magazine for the rifle, and I did the math for how much it should weigh for me to handle the recoil, and… and…"

"You mean it was Carl who did the math for you," Russel corrected with a knowing sneer. "He was an even bigger nerd than you were, that's for sure."

"D-Don't make me bring out Crescent Rose again! I'll – I'll cut you with it!"

"You're still not very good at making threats, Rose. You should have made the time you had with Carl last. Kid knew what to say to make you think twice, even for a nerd."

Ruby did bring out Crescent Rose, but unlike the previous times when she had held it threateningly over Russel, he didn't look at all worried now.

Whitley's lax, amused cackles filled the misty air. "I think Weiss's misanthropic tendencies are rubbing off on you, Ruby." He raised himself from his kneeling position. His jar was completely full of the pinkish-purplish sap he was harvesting from a tree. Whitley set the jar down in the nearby wheelbarrow along with the other jars of sap they had gathered. "I believe that is the last one. Now, where did Merle wander off to? He should have returned by now."

Between the drifting cherry-colored leaves and the dense line of trees that were signature to the Forever Fall forest, a small Ursa Grimm burst out and landed into the small clearing the Beacon students were residing in. The Ursa fell onto its back, and Merle was climbing on top of it. He was beating the Grimm viciously and repeatedly with the mallet attachment on his Hook Blade. Two or three larger Ursa charging after them were lagging not too far behind.

"Ah, there he is," Whitley greeted with a smile, undeterred by Merle's battle cries or the Grimm's dying croaks. "I was beginning to suspect something was wrong. It does not take that long for one to privately relieve him or herself."

All Merle had to say back was half-desperate and half-irritated shout of, "A little help would be nice!" The incoming Grimm came close enough to lunge. Without further prompting, Whitley, Ruby, and Russel sprang into action.

As Ruby took out her frustrations on the raging, soulless Grimm, she couldn't help but wish she had gotten better teammates for this field trip. Whitley was okay – great, actually, since he did most of the sap harvesting, but Russel was Russel, and Merle kept trying to get out of the work they were supposed to be doing. Add the fact that Ruby had only just truly accepted that she was, will, and had to be a good, proactive leader for Team RWBY, and wasn't quite confident to be the leader for a whole other team entirely, it all spelled for a less than ideal crew to put together.

The field trip itself was a nice change of pace in the monotony of Beacon's regular classes. Sure, it was Beacon Academy, the weapons and dueling classes were awesome, and a lot of the new friends Ruby has made are pretty cool, but at the end of the day, it was still school. That meant quizzes and tests you had to stay up studying late at night for, the homework that you think will take five minutes but actually takes five hours, the pages and pages and pages and pages of textbook material you had to read…

Ruby took solace in the fact that the light at the end of this tunnel was becoming an official, certified, awe-inspiring, and – in Negan's words – badass Huntress. Plus, some of the classes were actually really, really cool!

Teachers like Professor Peach and Professor Eastman helped keep things interesting at Beacon. Professor Peach taught one of the science classes, so they were regularly doing labs and plenty of hands-on type of work with Dust and stuff. The sap they were collecting was meant for another experiment regarding animalistic Grimms' attraction toward the the sap.

Professor Eastman decided to come along on the field trip to supervise another Team Dynamics exercise. Each team leader was given new teammates for the day. It was to teach "versatility and trust with your fellow Huntsmen," or something like that. Ruby hadn't really been paying attention when the Professor explained it. She was too busy being dismayed that she wasn't with Team RWBY and had to work with Russel at the time.

Once all of the Grimm were dead, Team RMWR (or Team Roamer, as Ruby suggested after twenty attempts of figuring out a good acronym for their temporary team) was cleaning the blood off their weapons. Standing by the wheelbarrow, Whitley was poking at one of his fancy revolvers with a screwdriver-looking tool. Merle sat at the base of a tree, wiping a rag along his Hook Blade. Russel leaned against the side of another tree, watching the Ursa corpses disperse into nothingness. Ruby sat across from him, and she was doing her darnedest not to glare at him.

"You like what you see, Rose?" Russel said to her without looking away from the Grimm.

The response of "Your hair looks stupid!" came out before Ruby could stop it. In her defense, she really thought that the Mohawk looked stupid. She should know. She wasn't Yang's trusted little sister for nothing.

"Hey. Hey!" Merle yelled, raising his arms up. "Can you two pipe down for just one second? Can't damn hear myself think with y'all shouting so much." As if giving up, Merle exasperatedly threw his arms toward the Rs of Team RMWR. He rose and sauntered a few feet away, though still within the team's line of sight.

"Russel started it!" Ruby pointed her index finger at the bully.

"It does not matter who started it," Whitley said. He set his screwdriver back into the camouflaged duffle bag he constantly carried around with him. Most of his guns and hunting gear were stored in it, the camouflage look often clashed with his white and blue attire. "What matters is who finishes it, Ruby, and neither of you seem willing to finish it."

"I'm trying!" Ruby defended herself. "I'm really, really trying, but Russel isn't trying at all!"

Russel chuckled. "Blaming everyone except yourself for your own problems? Isn't that the Ice Queen's shtick, Rose?"

"Don't bring Weiss into this!"

"Russel isn't wrong," Whitley said under his breath.

"Even she's trying, though! She helped Jaune and Cardin study for Professor –"

"Doctor," Whitley corrected.

"Doctor Oobleck's test last week. Cardin's trying, too. He apologized to Velvet, Jaune, and everyone else he was bullying. Russel hasn't apologized to anyone!"

Whitley laughed softly again, zipping up his duffle and putting the sling over his shoulder. "Have you apologized to Russel for your own crass behavior toward him yet?"

Admittedly, Ruby hasn't. "He should say sorry first! He – He started it…" Ruby lost some of her energy near the end. Whitley and Russel were smirking at her. They looked like they just won an argument, and Ruby felt like she just lost one.

Stupid Russel. First he was friends with Philip, and now he's suddenly friends with Whitley. Today was just not Ruby's day.

When Ruby plopped down to hug her legs against her chest, she could hear Merle take a few steps toward her. "Hey, why so down, Red?" he asked not unkindly. "What happened to all that fire ya had in ya? This is the closest thing to an actual hunt that we've had since the school year started. I thought you'd be more excited, considerin' that you always talk about bein' a Huntress an' all."

"It's not the field trip that's the problem," Ruby muttered, refusing to look at anyone in the eye.

"So, it's the new team that's bothering you, is it?" Merle laughed softly, too, but unlike Whitley's that was goodhearted teasing on Ruby's behalf, Merle's sounded like he really was entertained by Ruby's attitude. "What, is your big pal Merle not your first choice as a team member?"

"Not really," Ruby answered, still downcast. "No offense, but… yeah, not really." Despite his friendliness, Merle was a pretty open racist at times.

"Shouldn't be surprised, I guess. You got your eyes on Slick. Rather partner up with his pansy ass than Uncle Merle." Merle laughed lightly again. "Too bad for you that he's putting the wood in our local mute, huh?" Merle licked his lips and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Ruby's frown became more pronounced. "Pansy ass?" she repeated. She wouldn't call Negan something like that. Slick was a good name, but pansy ass?

"Yeah. Slick likes to act like he's a badass. The jacket makes him look big, but take off that coat, strip him down bare, I'm betting he'll look as skinny as my little brother."

Ruby didn't know Merle had a brother, let alone a little one. Maybe he lived in Vale instead of Patch. Yang has mentioned before that the Merle's parents are supposed to be divorced like Carl's parents. "What makes you say that?" Ruby asked Merle.

"Slick likes to talk a lot, and a man doesn't talk about his dick so much unless he's got issues with it, or something to hide."

"If Negan has something to hide with his boy-thing, then why would he joke about it so much?"

"Hiding in plain sight." Merle turned his head to Whitley. "You're living with Slick, ain't ya Fancy Pants? Ya know if he has any muscle under all those layers?"

Whitley wasn't paying attention to Merle's query. He was staring toward the line of trees from where the Grimm that were chasing Merle had originally come from. Ruby followed his gaze and saw something in the distance. Between the woodwork and the floating leaves, there was a tiny black blurb. The blurb was steadily growing in size. The white protruding bones and red glowing eyes of another Ursa could eventually be seen, and as it got closer, something else could be discerned sitting on the back of the Grimm.

"Come on, Nigel," Nora declared, kicking her Ursa's side with her leg. "Faster! We can't let Negan and your evil twin win!"

As Nora and her Ursa ran past Team RMWR, another Ursa with another rider followed. "Like fuck you're gonna beat us, Valkyrie! Mine's bigger!"

"That means it's slo-wer!" Nora shouted back in a sing-song voice.

"That's just means we're gonna have a good fucking night all night long when we catch up!"

Three or four more Ursa followed after Nora and Negan. The Grimm completely ignored RMWR. They were more focused on trying to catch up with the student Hunters that had commandeered two of their own.

"It appears Negan's strength is at least comparable to Nora's," Whitley said after a shared moment of silence, "to be capable of taming and riding an Ursa of that size, so perhaps that answers your question, Merle."

"Could've been his Semblance," Merle suggested.

"Perhaps, perhaps…"

"Does his Sembalnce have anything to do with controlling Grimm?"

Russel sighed to himself. "Either way, they're fucking psychos, the both of them."

"They're not psychos!" Ruby screamed at him. "They're just, uh, excitable!"

"Excitable fucking freaks you mean. Kind of like you, right?"

Ruby wanted to pull at her hair again, or try to seriously trash Russel with Crescent Rose again, but the last time she got too physically violent with Russel, Negan deducted a hundred points from her. She didn't want to lose any points, arbitrary or otherwise, from the friends she's already made, so since then, she's been trying to restrain herself around Russel. She's had… mixed success with that.

Blake landing from the red bushel of leaves atop a tree helped provide a good distraction from Ruby's aggravation. "Hey Blake!" Ruby greeted her sister's partner.

"Hey," Blake replied. Her yellow eyes landed on Whitley, Russel, and Merle, slowly and in that order, before falling onto Ruby. "Did you see Negan and Nora riding on top of a couple of Ursa come by this way?"

"Yup." Ruby pointed in the direction the pair was racing towards. "They've got some spare Ursa chasing after them, too."

"Of course they do," Blake muttered. "Thanks, Ruby."

"No problem. And good luck finding them."

"Finding them isn't the hard part," Blake said as she was leaving. "Getting them to finally settle down is another."

Once Blake was out of sight, Russel spoke up. "You aren't going to go with her, Rose? She's chasing a pack of freaks. Aren't you going to go help them out?"

God, why did Russel always have to egg her on? Why? Why? Why did he want to be such a horrible bully all the time? What did she ever do to him? It's not like Ruby ever did anything to Russel before he became a full-time bully. She was pretty sure of that. Just what exactly was his deal?

Ruby was about to embark on another rant on Russel. However, a hissing growl sounding off right next to her ear stopped her. She was still glaring at Russel, and Whitley and Merle were still in her field of vision, so whatever was grumbling at Ruby was behind her.

The growling suddenly became a large snarl. Ruby hopped to her feet, spun around, and unleashed her scythe on the prowler. The growling snarl shifted to a pained shriek. Ruby blinked. She saw herself with Crescent Rose stabbing into the spine of yet another Ursa, only this one looked… It looked different.

The Grimm was much larger than the ones Team RMWR previously encountered. It was an Ursa Major with bigger bones, a bigger body, and a bigger bite. It lay on its stomach with its limbs stretched out. There was a bullet hole on the side of its neck, but there were many more wounds across its entire form. They were mostly splotches of red with flesh and fur meshing with the muscly bits underneath the skin. It almost reminded Ruby of a lab she had to do at Signal, where she and Carl did an autopsy of a dead pig, except that the Grimm before Ruby looked a lot more… gory than anything Ruby recalls ever seeing.

Ruby was standing on the Grimm's back, her and her weapon avoiding the bone spikes protruding out of creature. A trail of blood, much darker and more noticeable than the red of Forever Fall's wildlife, led from the Ursa Major to deeper into the woods. A small puddle of blood was slowly brewing underneath the Grimm, too.

"Gross," Ruby murmured. She cocked her rifle and readied herself to finish off the Grimm, but Merle started waving his hands up in the air to stop her.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold your horses, Rosey!" Merle stepped directly in front of Ruby. He placed his good hand on Ruby's arm and placed his Hook Blade hand on top of the Grimm's head. "Don't ya see what this Grimm here is? It's an Ursa Major."

"Yeah, I know," Ruby confirmed. "I'm killing it."

"I said hold on, Rosey," Merle insisted. "Hold off on killing the nasty sucker for a few minutes." His eyes scanned the Grimm's masked face. "Ya know how we've got to do presentations on specific type of Grimm for the Mad King next week?"

Mad King was Merle's nickname for Professor Port. Ruby wasn't sure why, though. "Yes," Ruby said with a hint of uncertainty.

"Well, my team's supposed to do one about Ursa." Merle rapped his weapon against the mask of the Grimm. "And the Governor was thinking, instead of just reading about 'em in a book or the Internet… why not study 'em up close and personal?"

"Governor?"

"Yeah, Governor. That's what we call Philip."

Ah, "we" must mean Yang's group of friends from Signal who had gotten into Beacon. That group would include Yang, Team PMPR, and a couple of other first-year teams Ruby hasn't really met yet. "So Philip suggested that your team find an Ursa out in the wild to poke and prod?"

"Yeah, he did."

"That's sounds a bit… wild, for Philip."

Merle pulled out one of his spare blades and stabbed it through one of the paws of the Ursa. The Grimm groaned but barely twitched. "We were supposed to find one this weekend, but hey, we've got a big'un served up for us right here." With one paw relatively secure, Merle moved to stab another blade in the other paw. He took out two more knives, probably for the feet.

"Wait, Merle," Ruby beseeched in an attempt to stop him, "is this really the time to do this?" Ruby checked her scroll. "It's half past noon. We need to start heading back to the base camp soon."

"Come on, Rose," Russel said. As Merle finished locking down the Ursa, Russel pulled out his scroll. The small blinking light on the side of it indicated that it was recording video. "How often do you get to see a Grimm like this face-to-face when they aren't trying to kill you?"

"In Atlas, quite regularly," Whitley said as he approached the unusual scene before him. Hands folded behind his back, he kept a reasonable distance away from the blood of the Grimm. "At least for the many scientists working for the SDC. Live Grimm are often captured and examined in designated facilities. I have visited a few in the past, and though Merle's method of restraining our given test subject is…"

The pool of blood was getting a little wider. Fighting the sensations of her queasy stomach, Ruby had to wonder how much blood a Grimm had in it. Did Grimm even have veins and arteries or a beating heart like a real person, or was the blood just stored inside the body?

"… less than hygienic, Philip's plan of personally studying the enemy we are sworn to fight is a perfectly reasonable one." Whitley set down his duffle bag, zipped it open, and began to search through it. "This is an opportunity that should not go to waste. So long as you continue to keep your scythe pinning the Major down for us, Ruby, I believe there is plenty of information we can extract from the Grimm."

Ruby might have said no if it was only Merle and Russel – especially Russel – who asked, but Whitley was a smart guy. He was Weiss's brother, he was Negan's partner, and he was not-at-all a bully. He was a friend, and a smart friend, so Ruby nodded in reluctant acquiescence, turned on the safety for her weapon, and kept Crescent Rose steady. "Fine, but don't take too long. Okay? Please?"

"Of course, Ruby."

From his duffle bag, Whitley put on a pair of white plastic gloves and tied a white bandana around the lower half of his face. He also took out this small, compact box. It had the texture of a white birch wood. Opening the box revealed a collection of Dust vials, not unlike the vast collection Weiss had kept in her luggage.

Whitley also took out a bowl and a spoon. He poured some Dust mixtures into the bowl and started mixing. "Russel, may you please make some cuts along the Ursa Major's sides with your knives? Make them only as deep as a quarter the length of your blades."

"Whatever you say, Schnee." Russel did as he was asked while also continuing to record with his scroll. The Grimm barely moaned as the cuts were made. Even more blood dripped and added to the growing puddle. "Mind telling me what these are for?"

Merle replaced the attachment on his Hook Blade with something that resembled a skeletal prosthetic hand. He put a small notepad on it. After pulling out a pen and putting the cap in his mouth, he started jotting down notes. "Never took you as one of them sickos who liked trying to make Grimm scream, Fancy Pants. You look too clean for that sort of thing."

"You are mistaken, Merle," Whitley said. With the spoon, he spattered the now purple-looking Dust blend along the Grimm's new cuts and the old ones. The low growls of the beast drifted into silence. It was still awake, but it wasn't making any more panting sounds. Did Grimm even have proper lungs like a real animal to breathe and pant with? "This is merely a… sedative. While not recommended for human consumption, it does wonders for keeping wildlife and Grimm docile for a short time."

"Sick," Russel commented with a crooked grin. "How many points is it gonna cost me to get the recipe off you?"

"Of course you would ask for it," Ruby grumbled at him.

"Hey, who's more sick? The guy asking for the recipe, or the guy who made it?"

"It is all a matter of perspective," Whitley remarked. He set down his Dust-stained bowl and spoon. After taking out a plastic zipper bag out of his back pocket, Whitley filched Russel's other dagger from its sheath. Whitley cut off a lock of fur from the Grimm. Snippets of black smoke spewed out. Before Whitley could place the hairs inside the bag, the strands in Whitley's hand dissipated completely into the air.

Ruby found herself oddly intrigued by this. Obviously, Grimm bodies disappeared when you killed them, but she can't remember personally seeing dismembered parts of a Grimm disappear before the original Grimm dies. They probably do, though. Ruby does recall cutting off limbs in the heat of a fight, and there weren't any Grimm remains after the fight. Ruby just never consciously looked and thought about it.

Whitley seemed to be savoring in the looking and thinking, what with his wide eyes and absorbed leer. He cut off a few more strands off and watched them fade away from his hands. "I have actually encountered few Grimm before my arrival to this school," he confessed as he grabbed another handful of fur, trying to find a decent sample of Grimm hairs to bring home.

"Really?" Russel snorted in disbelief. "Kid like you gets into Beacon, you're either smarter than most of the teachers or had to be wrestling Grimm when you were still a baby."

"It was the former in my case, no. The first time I killed a Grimm was actually during initiation."

Ruby's jaw dropped before she could stop it. "Wait, s-seriously? You enroll at Beacon at thirteen, and you haven't even fought a Grimm until a couple of months ago? B-But, but, how? What junior academy did you go to? Who trained you? H-How, how did you… Are you really just that smart?"

"There were two particular tutors that were instrumental in my training, yes, and they are decades smarter than I am." Whitley poked at one of the spikes sticking out of the Ursa Major's back. "Do you believe there is enough time for us to extract some of these bones off our test subject?" Whitley began to prick slightly deeper into the skin around the spike.

"Are–Are you serious? No! God no!" The contents of Ruby's brunch rumbled uncomfortably inside her stomach. "Why would you want to cut off the bones of a Grimm? That's like, I don't know, cutting the tail off a dog, or maybe tearing the shell off a turtle."

"Don't be so childish, Ruby." Whitley spun the knife between his fingers. He raised it up high and brought it down to the Grimm. Ruby shot out her free hand and grabbed his wrist before the blade could hit its mark.

"One: You're two years younger than me and at least two centimeters shorter than me," Ruby countered as pointedly as she could. "You can't call me a child. Two: I'm not being childish! I just have a healthy respect for –" The Ursa Major suddenly shuddered and gave a high-pitched yelp. Ruby nearly fell off. Fortunately, her grip on her scythe held true. "Whoa. Uh, what was that?"

Merle popped up like a gopher from the other side of the Ursa. He was smirking like a smug fox. "Now, look at what I got here?" He held up what looked like a worn, petrified piece of wood. It had a faded eggshell white color and was about the size of two tissue boxes stacked on top of each other. The end of the object was shaped to a point.

Slowly, Ruby stood herself on her tippy toes to look over pass the Ursa's spikey back. She could see the front right paw of the Grimm. Of its five individual claws extending form each finger, the Grimm was missing the one that was supposed to be on its ring finger.

Ruby looked back to the object twirling between Merle's fingers and connected the dots to what that object actually was.

"Wait a minute," Ruby slowly said as she narrowed her eyes at the detached claw. "Why isn't it turning into smoke like when Whitley was cutting off fur?"

"Wow. Good point, Rose," Russel admitted as set the bony shape in the frame of his recording. "Freaky. Grimm bones inside and out are supposed to become smoke along with the rest of the body, right? What's your take, Schnee?"

"I have… some ideas," Whitley answered. While Ruby and Russel had decently healthy looks of curiosity fixated on the glorified finger nail, Whitley looked positively mesmerized by what he saw. "Grimm are killers first and foremost. The outward bone-like attachments of Grimm are the primary instruments for killing. The Grimm dies, then the weapons die, and if Doctor Eugene Porter's theory of Forced Grimm Evolution has any merit…"

Whitley spieled on and on about scientific laws and natural selection and other stuff Ruby had no clue about. It reminded Ruby of how she got carried away with weapons, so she let Whitley have his moment of incomprehensible chatter, even if Ruby was getting more and more lost by the second.

"You can keep theorizing all you want, egghead," Merle spoke as he admired the bone claw. "All I know is that I've got a new present for Lil' Merle." He put his notebook away try to jury rig the claw onto his Hook Blade.

Russel gave a snicker. "Don't hog all of the fun, Dixon." Russel put one foot on the Ursa Major's mutilated paw. He stomped his other foot down a few times, eventually causing another claw to pop out. Russel snatched it up and held it close to his camera. "Look at these things. Looks more real than anything Professor Port's got hanging in his classroom, doesn't it?"

"As if you'd know," Ruby retorted, albeit a little more pettily this time around. "You always flunked on Grimm physiology tests."

"Who cares about tests, Rose? Look at these things! We could make necklaces out of them, maybe make some cash out of this."

"We're not out here to make money!" Ruby objected fiercely. "We are out here to collect tree sap and to do team-building exercises! We're not here to torture some poor, dying Grimm."

Ruby stopped herself short. Never did she expect she would take pity on such a large and an otherwise terrifying Grimm. Her time in Beacon has been leading her to do a lot of things she never thought she would end up doing.

"Hell, can you even torture a Grimm?" Merle asked offhandedly. "Grimm only live to kill and murder. Bet they'd get a kick out of torture if anything."

"No!" Ruby shouted. "No, no, no-no-no, we are not talking about torturing anything or anyone! We are going to stop playing around, kill this Grimm, and head back to the base camp, right now!" Ruby set off the safety on Crescent Rose. With the blade lodged firmly inside the spine of the Ursa, the barrel of the rifle was lined up almost perfectly with the Grimm's head. She could fire and blow the Grimm's brains into oblivion, but Whitley was kneeling right in front of the Grimm. "Whitley, can you move a little? I don't want you to get splattered by blood or black smoke or anything."

The Schnee ignored her. He was staring intently at the Ursa's face. It looked like he was having a staring contest with it. Ruby peered her head around another back spike and saw the Ursa's crimson eyeballs leering back into Whitley's.

"Whitley," Ruby repeated. "Can you move now, please?"

"It's looking at me," Whitley said, refusing to break his gaze with the Grimm.

"I, uh, can see that. Yeah. Why are you just staring at it?"

"It's not that I'm looking at it. It's only looking at me."

"Okay. Uh, then why is the Ursa Major looking at you?"

Whitley placed a hand on the Ursa's bone mask. The Ursa didn't react. Its red eyes only continued to glow and glower at Whitley. "In the SDC labs, the actual tranquilizers used on Grimm are never one hundred percent effective. Grimm always remained at least partially awake, at least partially conscious, just enough to gently growl at the scientists and researchers observing and testing them. Even at their weakest, during their last hours, the Grimm could not help but express their hatred and bloodlust for humanity."

"Really?" Russel said, obviously intrigued. Merle succeeded in securing the Ursa claw on his Hook Blade and was eyeing Whitley with a similar level of interest. "You'd think the dumb bastards would just give up and die at that point. They can't escape an SDC lab, can they?"

"Of course not, and no, Grimm would never waver from their mission of humanity's extinction, but this Grimm in particular," Whitley held the Ursa Major by its chin and raised it, "even with my crude Dust mixtures, it should still be demonstrating its innate anger and hatred. Purring a low-hanging hiss, showing its barred teeth, glaring hatefully at its tormentors…"

An epiphany hit Ruby. "But it's not doing any of that, right? The Ursa's just sitting here and doing nothing."

Memories of school field trips with Huntsmen teachers flashed before Ruby's eyes. When they were in areas on Patch where Beowolves were known to wander, one or two teachers had always stayed with the class as they all watched from a distance another Huntsman teacher kill the Grimm.

One of the things that really struck Ruby was how focused the Grimm where. She remembers seeing their noses constantly sniffing the air, their eyes darting between the Hunters and the unarmed students, and how when the Beowolves were lying on their sides as their bodies became smoke, they were doing their hardest to drag themselves toward the nearest person alive. Uncle Qrow tends to kill the wolves before they got too close, but they were usually just close enough for Ruby to see them choke out their last, nasty croaks.

But this large Grimm, who had to have lived for a good while to get so big, wasn't croaking or moaning or – It wasn't doing anything, really, other than tiredly staring into Whitley's eyes. The red glow was losing its light, though, and it looked like it was ready to fall asleep.

"Correct, Ruby," Whitley said, his eyelids falling a bit. "This Grimm… It lives to kill, but now it is dying. I believe it has accepted its fate and merely wishes to wait out its final hours without unnecessarily overexerting itself." Whitley pulled out his own notepad out of his duffle and started scribbling. "Yes, Doctor Porter's theories may actually have some merit to them. Why my father doesn't indulge his research propositions more often eludes my understanding."

"Hey, Whitley," Ruby spoke up, her own intrigue now waning and being replaced by a faint dizziness. The smell of soiled Grimm blood mixed with Dust must be getting to her now. "Can we talk about these 'theories' another time? I need to kill the Ursa still, and we really need to start heading back now."

"Like hell we do," Merle objected. His good hand reached into his back pocket. The jiggling of keys could be heard. "All this talk about theories and experimenting with Grimm just gave me an idea." Merle pulled out a small zipper bag. Inside were little orange-colored bottles with white caps, the kind that Ruby's dad sometimes got from the pharmacy.

"Christ, Dixon," Russel chuckled to himself. "You've been holding out on us."

Whitley rotated his head almost robotically to look at the bag of bottled pills. "Are those prescription medications?" he asked.

"What do you think, egghead?" Merle goaded sarcastically. "You're a smart guy. Ya think we can get a Grimm high on some good stuff?" Merle tossed his little zipper bag to Whitley, who caught it easily and began to read the labels on the bottles.

"It is certainly a possibility," Whitley admitted, and Ruby finally caught on to what Merle was suggesting.

"Oh, no," Ruby said. She pulled her scythe out of the Ursa Major. Hopping over its spiked back, she sliced through the Ursa's neck. She landed beside Whitley, falling to her knees briefly before standing tall and pointing fingers at the rest of her impromptu team. "I've heard the stories! I've seen the documentaries! My dad and Carl's dad told us all about how bad it is use to illegal drugs, and I will not be caught as an accessory to a crime!"

"Come on, Rosey," Merle beseeched her with a grin. "Your dad might be cool, but the Grimes Sherriff was a pussy. A lil' kick every now and then never hurt no one."

"That's what the drug dealers say, but then 'every now and then' becomes every single day of your life!"

Russel rolled his eyes. "Oh, so you don't care about your uncle's drinking problem, but you don't want anything to do with recreational drugs? Yeah, fuck that." He moved to swipe the bag of drugs from Whitley, but Ruby grabbed it first.

"Ruby," Whitley said politely, "may I have that bag back please?"

"This. Is. Filth!" Ruby declared. "If Weiss finds out I let you guys, especially you Whitley, take some of these drugs, then she is going to kill me!" That's not to mention the legal consequences, too.

"Oh, so that's what this is about," Russel deadpanned. "It's not about getting caught by the teachers. It's about your crush on the Schnee heiress."

"No, it is not! There isn't even any crush I have to begin with!" Ruby threw the bag of illegal pharmaceuticals to the ground. She prepped her rifle for another shot and took aim. "Executive decision as team leader! I am destroying this!"

"Hey, hold on!" Merle, losing his playful attitude, protested with a shout. "That's my stash! It ain't yours to destroy or nothing!"

"I agree, Ruby," Whitley said. He took a subtle step toward her and outstretched his hand to push away Crescent Rose. "Please, listen to reason."

"Don't care. I'm pulling the trigger." And so Ruby kept her word and fired.

She did not anticipate a multicolored explosion to be set off, or for Ruby to feel her body to get sent flying into the air. The flight was not unlike when she was launched off a platform during Beacon's initiation, but the detonation was all too reminiscent of when she sneezed an explosion with Weiss's Dust supply on her first day at Beacon.

Ruby blinked. The vague wailing outlines of Russel and Merle were flying toward the horizon away from where Ruby's body was heading. Whitley was soaring alongside Ruby. For the most part, the younger Huntsmen students let the force of the explosion carry them over the forest without much resistance.

"What just happened?" Ruby numbly asked to Whitley. Whitley's bandana was untied and no longer covering the lower half of his face. He held it in his hand and was coughing into the cloth.

"Some drugs, illegal or otherwise, are synthesized with Dust," Whitley managed to get out as he cleared his throat. He spat into the white cloth and tossed it away. He gave Ruby a stern look. "I was trying to inform you, Ruby, that if you wanted to dispose those substances, you should not fire a custom Dust-charged sniper rifle bullet at them."

Embarrassed, Ruby avoided Whitley's fixed stare. "I didn't know that. I'm sorry," she said in a muffled voice.

Whitley sighed in the same way Weiss sighed whenever she was absolutely done with Ruby's supposed childish antics, except Whitley sounded more resigned rather than frustrated or disappointed. He faced the cloudy blue sky above them and rested the back of his head against the palms of his hands.

"I am more than well-aware of the negative aspects of misusing non-prescribed drugs," Whitley stated plainly. "I was merely considering taking simple and small samples, nothing more and nothing less."

"Wait, you actually were thinking about trying some of those pills?" Ruby whipped her head around so fast that her hood smacked against her face. She pulled it out of the way so Whitley could see her incredulous expression. "Why?"

"I was curious."

"But they're bad for you. Like, really, really bad."

"So we are told by certified doctors and professionals, but we cannot always take things at face-value. I always enjoy learning about new things firsthand rather than only being told about them, and feeling the effects of non-prescribed medications on the body at least once would do more than satisfy my curiosity on the topic."

Ruby frowned and tilted her head at Whitley. "You're smart, though. Shouldn't you know better than to try out drugs like that?"

"There is a difference between knowing information about a given topic and truly understanding it. All I ever intended to earn out of this experience is understanding. That is all, Ruby."

Negan's talk about Whitley and Weiss's reasons for attending Beacon Academy sprang to mind. Ruby supposed she couldn't blame Whitley for wanting to try out new things in a new environment. He sure was a lot more open-minded than Ruby gave him credit for, especially since Weiss was his sister.

"Besides," Whitley added as an afterthought, "what I do in my personal life shouldn't affect Weiss's. She has no need to know whether or not I decide to look further into Merle's connections in the drug trade."

That was something Ruby would have to take a stance against. Sibling bonds shouldn't be taken for granted, even if Whitley had some sort of complex or whatever with his sister.

However, she didn't have time to voice her concern. She and Whitley were now descending instead of flying upwards. They were about to land on a section of the elevated train bridge that traveled through Forever Fall. That Dust explosion must have been stronger than Ruby thought if it had sent them this far out and deep into the forest.

Ruby's and Whitley's Aura-infused legs hit the train tracks without trouble. As Whitley patted his pants down to remove residual Dust soot, Ruby stuck her pinky finger into her earlobe to hopefully erase that indistinct, echoing ringing that sometimes lingers when Ruby's too close to an explosion.

She and Yang had actually made a game out of that noise. When Yang had first started experimenting with explosive Dust rounds, the ringing had always persisted in their ears. Dad had bought them custom earplugs to help deal with the noise. Ruby would've worn them while Yang fired her harmless shots into the sky or at a target dummy. Ruby, with her semblance, had sneakily ran around Yang and fired the paintball gun Uncle Qrow had gotten the sisters for a special birthday at her. Yang had been trying to learn how to adapt to the temporary deafness caused by her shotgun gauntlets, and Ruby had gotten to splatter Yang's long, blonde mane with a myriad of colors.

It's been years since they played that game, what with how Yang started obsessing about her hair more and more as they got older, but now that they're on the same team and in the same grade year, Ruby hoped to host a training session where they practiced something similar.

Maybe Whitley can help set up something like that. The practice rounds Beacon supplied were concussive in nature, not paint-based, so maybe he can help spruce some bullets up that exploded into paint and packed the same punch as –

A whistling sound broke Ruby's train of thought. Removing her finger from her ear, she turned around to see a dark… train barreling along the tracks. It was practically roaring and screaming in front of her face. Out of panicked fright, she tackled Whitley so the two fell off the tracks and out of the way of the locomotive.

"Sorry!" Ruby cried out over the noise of the train. She and Whitley fell like a pair of bricks. They immediately landed in a set of red shrubs. A spread of pink leaves was flung up to float softly back to the ground.

Groaning, Ruby rubbed her forehead with a weak hand. She lifted her head up and realized she was lying on top of Whitley. His eyes were closed, and his forehead and cheeks had a flushed color to them, so Ruby's temple must have hit his when they hit the forest floor.

"Sorry about that," Ruby repeated. She shifted her legs so they weren't pressing against his. Whitley placed a hand against over his shut eyes, probably exasperated with Ruby's hasty actions thus far today, as Ruby tried to push herself off of him.

"Did you hear that?"

"The train?"

"No. It sounded like a scream."

At the sound of those two familiar voices, Ruby ducked her head back under the bushes surrounding her and Whitley. Her head slapped against Whitley's chest. He gave a half-hearted grunt, but Ruby stuck a hand to his mouth to keep him silent. "Shhh," Ruby whispered, inching her head slowly to look over the shrubbery. "Please be quiet for one second. Please."

Ruby was never more thankful for the reddish color in her hair than now. Without that hair color blending in with the red color of Forever Fall, Yang and Philip probably would have spotted her instantly.

They were near one of the supports for the train bridge. Their backpacks and jars of sap were sitting against the concrete column. Ruby glimpsed Yang's backside pacing down the farther side of the bridge. Philip was patrolling the side closer to where Ruby and Whitley were hiding. Fortunately, his eye-patched eye was facing Ruby, so when he turned his head around, she hid again before he caught her.

"I don't see anything, Yang," Ruby heard Philip say. "Probably just the train whistle that distracted you." Ruby could hear footsteps against the grassy turf walk away.

"I know the difference between a train whistle and an actual scream," was Yang's response.

"I don't know about that. Your hearing's never been the same since you and Ruby blew up half of Signal."

That wasn't their fault! If it was anyone's fault, it was Russel's for spilling Ruby's chocolate milk all over Yang's hair! If he didn't do that, then everything would have been fine!

"My hearing's fine," Yang defended herself. "What about your eye? I heard Weiss talking about these artificial robot eyeballs they're making at Atlas. Maybe you can, y'know –"

"I can live with one eye, Yang. We've been over this."

"Still leaves you with an obvious blind spot. It's also the reason I always beat you in dueling class."

"Who's to say that I just let you win when we get paired up?"

"Oh, I know you love me, Philip, but I know that you know that I know that if you didn't put up a good fight, I would have left you a long time ago."

"I like to choose my battles, Yang. Besides, I know better than to –" Philip never finished his sentence. He was cut off by that muffled moaning sound Ruby had begrudgingly and unwillingly gotten used to whenever Negan and Neo decided to randomly enter a smooching session. This muffled moaning sound, however, was obviously between Philip and Yang, and that made the whole thing so much worse.

Maybe Ruby shouldn't have hid and should have just made her and Whitley's presence known from the get-go. It may or may not have made the situation a little less uncomfortable. Still, when Ruby first popped her head over the bush, she could see that Philip and Yang were already in varying stages of undress. There was also a ruffled bedroll that was set by their gear and the bridge column, so Ruby had a pretty good guess on what those two were doing before the train whipped by, and Ruby did not want to interrupt another bout of her sister and her sister's boyfriend doing that unmentionable thing again. It was always just too awkward to be around them afterward.

Jeez, the moans were getting louder. It was already getting worse! As quickly and quietly as she could, Ruby slipped her hand into the satchel behind her back. She pulled out her pair of earplugs. She put them on but realized she was still lying atop Whitley with her hand over his mouth. His eyes were still shut. Ruby would have mistaken Whitley for sleeping if it weren't for the subtle rising and falling of his chest.

"I'm really sorry," Ruby whispered again. Whitley didn't have any mufflers for his ears, so Ruby just pressed her palms against them. Ruby repeated her apologies again and again as Yang's and Philip's voices undoubtedly grew louder. "I really don't want to walk in on them doing their thing, so please, just… stay quiet. I-I'll make it up to you, later… somehow."

Whitley gave no response. Ruby wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Weiss always voiced her disapproval whenever she felt it, and any honest compliments she might give usually had to be prodded out of her. Ruby hasn't spent enough time with Whitley to figure out if that was something they had in common or another opposite personality trait between them.

Whitley was consistently politer than Weiss, and Ruby enjoyed that politeness, but the only times Ruby's really seen him irritated is during a disagreement with Weiss or when Negan does a weird thing. Ruby was doing a weird thing at the moment, so it was really a fifty-fifty chance whether Whitley was really bothered or not.

Thankfully, Ruby's internal struggle was interrupted by yet another loud noise. This one, like the others, made Ruby jolt a little, but unlike the others, this loud noise sounded much more… visceral. The drug-Dust explosion was just an explosion, the train whistle was a howling roar, and this new boom reminded Ruby of when Grimm were torn apart by a hail of bullets or crushed flat by a giant war hammer.

Ruby popped her head over the bush again. She saw what had to be the tenth Ursa she's seen today. Well, what Ruby actually saw was a mass of black Grimm limbs and bones piling on a large blood splatter. Ruby could tell that it was an Ursa Grimm from the masked head that was rolling away from the mound of animalistic body parts. The whole thing must have fallen from the sky to leave a spread of blood that wide.

A blood-stained, barbed wired bat rose up out of the mound. The rest of Negan's body followed suit, and he was equally as bloody as Lucille.

"And I fucking win!" he announced with outstretched arms.

Another person popped out of the Grimm carcass with a skip in her steps. "It's a boy!" a slightly less bloodied Nora cheered. She stepped behind Negan and patted his head. "What should we name you?"

Ruby watched as Negan turned his head to answer Nora. He stopped midway. He stared at Yang and Philip who were and yup! Yup! Ruby is not looking at them! Yup, she cannot see them doing whatever it is that they're doing! Not at all! Not at all! Yup!

"Well, excuse the fuck out of me and Valkyrie," Negan said, putting a hand over his eyes and shying away from the frozen forms of Yang and Philip. "We didn't mean to interrupt a good, private session of fucking. I guess we'll just –" Negan stopped midway again. His eyes landed on Ruby, and Ruby just stared back at him. It was better to keep her attention on him rather than look away and risk looking at that thing which Yang does with her boyfriend which will not be named until further notice.

Just when Ruby was starting to feel more mature about herself in life, she can't bring herself to even name the mature thing her sister does with her boyfriend. Maybe she should spend some more time with Negan. He knows how to move pass the awkwardness and just go at things with a confident swagger.

Whitley groaned again. He pressed his elbow against the ground to push his upper body off the grass. Ruby, now realizing that Yang and Philip could probably see the two younger Huntsmen students, rolled off of Whitley and sent a wave in Negan's and Nora's direction.

"What the fucking hell, guys?" Negan asked in an almost depressed tone. He had a downcast frown and everything. "You guys have a fucking hot, orgasmic orgy, and you don't invite me? What the fucking hell? Seriously, I gave you that idea in the first place, too."

"As if we'd invite you," Yang muttered darkly. Philip was scrambling to redress himself, but Yang was taking her sweet time.

"My dick's more than big enough, if that's the problem. Trust me on that."

"Merle has been asking about that, actually," Whitley spoke up absently. Now, everyone's eyes became solely focused on him and Ruby. The hood on Ruby's cloak might not actually hide her from the world around her, but it helped deliver the feeling of it, at least.

"Wait a second," Yang said, confusion filling her voice. "Ruby? What are you doing here… with… Whitley…" The confused voice drifted to the sound Yang's voice makes when she starts gritting her teeth.

"Ahhhh," Nora squealed as she tilted her head, clasped her hands, and held them against her cheek. "You guys look good together."

Negan now had the beginnings of a smile on his face, but he still had some of that downcast tone in him. "Whitley, my partner, my other, I'm happy that you took my advice to heart, but the two of you are still pretty young for this kind of fun, and I'm pretty sure Rubes has got the hots for your sister. Unless this is a no-strings attached kind of deal, I'm thinking this is going to cause a fuck storm of unnecessary drama."

"We weren't doing anything like that!" Ruby immediately objected. "And why does everyone think that I have a crush on Weiss? We're just partners and future best friends! That's it!"

"Says you," Negan countered, his smile growing larger. "Speaking of, mind if Nora and I join in on the fun?"

"Oh! Oh!" Nora hopped high into the air and landed with a swirl. She pulled out her scroll. "I'm inviting Ren!"

"Hey, while you're at it, call Jauny boy and Nikos, too. God knows that they need something to give them a push if they're ever going to be together-together at some point."

"Oh, great idea, Negan! I'm already on it!"

Nora eventually got the other members on Team JNPR on speaker phone. With Nora giving an exuberant sales pitch on joining an orgy, Yang bursting in a barely contained fiery rage, Negan trying to keep a good distance between himself and Yang, and a half-dressed Philip trying to calm Yang down, the surrounding area become filled with noise almost as loud as the train that flew by.

Ruby turned to Whitley who was scratching the back of his head and cracking the back of his neck. "Sorry again," she said, mostly because she didn't know what else to say or do now.

"Your multiple apologies are accepted," Whitley said with another crack. He paused mid-crack as he blinked his eyes. "I just realized something. What happened to our supply of sap?"

God, the sap was probably lost in the Dust explosion earlier. To top everything that's happened today off, Team RMWR probably has to go collect more tree sap for a passing grade.

Still, the excitement today was better than boring old studying. Ruby can take some solace in that.


	5. Passing School Days - Part 2

Ruby steadied Crescent Rose, looked down the scope, lined up her shot, and fired.

Yes! The concussive round hit its intended target. Ruby could see the bullet bounce off of her target's face and land by his feet.

"You sonuva, uh! Bitch!"

Professor Goodwitch, standing at one end of the sparring arena, tapped her riding crop against the wall. "Mister Dixon, I understand how stressful a combat situation may be on the mind and the body, but you must learn and maintain discipline while in this class."

Once Merle was done nuzzling his injury, he threw his hand up into the air. "Yeah, teach. Whatever you say."

The holographic screen overhead showed that Merle's Aura levels were still fairly high, yet Ruby could see a dark bruise across his nose. Goodwitch might have a point on Merle's discipline problem, and not just in the language department. Otherwise, he would have prepared himself rightfully for Ruby's shot.

Merle wasn't seriously irked by Ruby's successful hit, however. He was impressed, grinning. "Good shot, Rosey. Yang taught you where to hit it wear it hurts, didn't she?"

Ruby matched his grin and spun her scythe, letting it rest on her shoulder. "You haven't seen nothing yet."

"I think that's my line, darling," Merle said as he jabbed the air in front of him with his weapon: the Hook Blade, a metal covering over where is lower right arm was supposed to be with a very basic dagger currently attached.

Yang yelled from Team RWBY's spot in the audience, "Hey, I've already got one guy flirting with my little sister. She doesn't need another!"

Before Ruby could dispel Yang's paranoia for the seventh time that day, Goodwitch tapped again. "Children, less talking, more sparring. Now."

Happy to oblige, Ruby dashed forward. She aimed to swipe at Merle's ankles. He would either fall under to let Ruby pin him to the floor or jump high enough for Ruby to roundhouse kick him to the edge of the arena. Merle ended up doing the latter, but when Ruby pitched her foot out, he caught it in his left hand.

Merle lobbed Ruby's ankle indiscriminately. Her sense of balance was temporarily thrown off during her spin in the air. Her eyes soon caught the glint of Merle's weapon. Thankfully, it bounced off of Crescent Rose. When Ruby's feet hit the ground, she tried to go for Merle's right shoulder. He deflected her attack, shoving Ruby back another step or two. They began exchanging blows between their weapons for a short while, neither really gaining an advantage over the other.

Dueling class by far has been Ruby's favorite class out of all of Beacon's freshman courses. During these last few weeks, Ruby has seen so, so many different kinds of weapons in action! She got to see Philip's modifications to his pair of handguns – the mod to turn them into a scoped automatic rifle or a pair of one-edged short swords. There were Whitley's collection of revolvers and lever-action rifles that he seemingly pulled out of an invisible magic satchel, and, most importantly, there was Merle's Hook Blade.

Ruby could go for hours gushing over Merle's Hook Blade. There were just so many options to it! The basic bayonet was there. You can never go wrong with the classics, but Merle also had an actual hook that was useful for disarming sparring opponents. Oh, and the harpoon and rope attachment had a pretty long range. It basically acted like a lethal grappling hook, and it made Ruby immensely jealous. She had failed miserably at building her own grappling hook add-on to Crescent Rose.

Despite Ruby's admiration for the weapon, there was a notable weakness with Merle's Hook Blade; specifically, the latching mechanism used to secure the various blades onto it. From what Ruby has seen during Merle's spars, it was too easy for an opponent to damage and loosen the bolt. The blade would fly off and open a chance for a killing blow.

As such, Ruby did just that, slicing Merle's current dagger off. As the tiny thing twirled above their heads, Ruby hit Merle with the bottom end of her weapon, again on the nose. He went into another bout of frustrated swears. All she needed now was another good hit and the match was hers!

Unfortunately, Ruby's jaw suddenly flared like it was on fire, her teeth and gums twisting against her Aura. Merle was smashing the hard, flat end of his gauntlet against her face. She was forced back, letting Merle catch his detached blade with his other hand. With a feral roar, he tried to jab the small knife into the side of Ruby's neck. Ruby shoved it aside by rotating Crescent Rose once more. However, Merle jabbed again, hitting along the skin around Ruby's eyes.

Her Aura prevented any serious or lasting damage, of course, but it blinded Ruby nonetheless. When Ruby reoriented herself, she saw Merle with the knife reequipped on his Hook Blade. He was coming at her again, fast.

Ruby quickly positioned her big gun and fired point-blank. She didn't have time to get in the right sniping pose, so the recoil shot her further back than she had expected. The impact of her back against the arena wall left her momentarily dazed. Fortunately, the bullet hit its mark. Merle crashed into the opposite wall. While Ruby fell to her knees and leaned on her weapon for support, Merle flopped down onto the floor face-first with no resistance.

Professor Goodwitch activated the buzzer, signifying the end of the duel. Ruby glanced at the holographic screen to see her Aura fluctuating between green and yellow with Merle's plenty red.

"The win goes to Ruby Rose," Goodwitch announced with a blank look. She walked up to the center of the room, all eyes on her. "Students, as you can see, Mister Dixon's Aura has now dropped into the red. In a tournament style duel, what would this indicate?"

A hand went up from the bleachers. "It would indicate that Mister Dixon is no longer fit for battle, and that the officials may call the match in his opponent's favor, as you have just shown."

"Correct, Mister Schnee," Goodwitch congratulated. She turned to Merle, who was slowly pulling himself to his feet. "Mr. Dixon, it's been weeks now. While you may be a skilled brawler and tracker, please try to refer to your scroll more often during combat. Gauging your Aura will help you decide–"

"Yeah, yeah," Merle waved off at the Professor, "I know the spiel, teach. Ya don't have to go over it every single time someone loses a match."

"It seems that I do," Goodwitch said simply, "considering that you, Mister Arc, and even you, Miss Rose," Ruby cringed at the critical eye sent her way, "along with a number of other students still fail to acknowledge your scrolls during combat. Until all of you do, I shall continue to go over this 'spiel' for as long as needed."

Taking the bittersweet victory for what it was worth, Ruby found her way to her seat reserved by her team. Yang gave her a supportive thumbs-up. Blake gave one, too, even though she was hiding her face behind another one of her books.

Weiss still had that metaphorical shell around her, but she still complimented Ruby. "A satisfactory effort," she said. "The execution could have used more work, though."

"How much work?" Ruby asked as she took her spot beside her partner.

"A lot of work," Weiss said as Goodwitch continued her lecture on scrolls. "I would have liked for you to maintain your Aura well above the halfway point, along with showing more finesse in your fighting style."

"It's called grace under pressure," Ruby defended herself, discreetly gauging Weiss's facial expression. Weiss was more focused on Goodwitch while keeping an ear open to Ruby.

"That was not grace. Trust me." And Ruby did trust the Ice Princess to know what could be considered graceful.

"But I was –" What was the word again? Comet? Colony? Commotion? "– competent during the match, right? I just need a little more practice," Ruby admitted, still looking at Weiss from her side. "Maybe you can help me out some more, show me a little of that finesse and grace during our free period tomorrow. Whaddya say?"

Weiss did not smile back, nor were there any changes in her expression to acknowledge Ruby's presence. All Weiss did was tilt her head vaguely in Ruby's direction. Ruby happily chalked that response up as a point in her favor.

Her and Negan's plan to let Weiss lead Team RWBY didn't really pan out. Weiss must have gotten some advice from her talk with Professor Port during the same day Ruby had talked with Professor Ozpin and Negan. That very night, Weiss had opened up to Ruby and given her support for the R of RWBY to be the team leader.

Getting Weiss to open up more was still a work-in-progress, though. It was going to take more time, but it was time well worth investing.

"… and I believe there is enough time left for one more match," Professor Goodwitch was saying during Ruby's little internal celebration. "Mister Arc."

Team JNPR was sitting on the row below Team RWBY. Jaune visibly cowered when his name was called.

"You, Mister Arc, will be combating Mister Negan Winchester." Jaune cowered visibly again, and Goodwitch snapped her crop another time. "And if Mister Winchester and Miss Bonnan are done fooling around instead of paying attention to their peers' duels, we can finish up class for today."

Team NBLS was sitting in the row above RWBY. Negan and Neo were doing nothing to hide the fact that they were smooching and trying to suck the other's tongue out with their teeth and lips. Ruby had been doing her best to ignore them since class began.

"Mister Winchester!" Goodwitch forcibly repeated, raising her voice. Negan separated from Neo, a pop resounding between them. When Goodwitch wasn't looking, Neo stuck her tongue out and pulled the skin under her left eye down at the Professor. While Jaune sulked his way down to the arena, Negan was skipping down the stairs like Ruby used to do when walking to and from school as a kid.

Once Jaune and Negan were in place on the floor below, Negan lost his dazed, toothy grin. "Wait, wait, wait. Lucille and I have to fight Jauny boy?"

Goodwitch nodded. "Correct, Mister Winchester."

"Oh, Jauny boy," Negan whimpered to Jaune's discomfort, "those blonde balls of yours aren't going be blonde for long. You know what color they're going to be after Lucille has her way with you?"

As he drew his sword and shield with sweat slipping down his face, Jaune gulped. "Is it blue?"

"Nope. Even bluer!"

"Begin," Goodwitch signaled before Negan's comments could get out of hand.

With a deep, tired, and resigned breath, Jaune charged forward with a mighty battle cry.

In contrast, Negan was taking his time putting one foot in front of the other, using Lucille as a walking cane.

Jaune, still shrieking in desperation, thrust his sword forward when Negan was in striking distance. Negan stepped around the sharpened steel, using Lucille to trip Jaune. Jaune ended up landing on his backside. When Negan tried to bring his bat down toward Jaune's face, Jaune pulled over his shield to protect himself.

The force of Lucille's blow forced Jaune's shield to hit himself against his head. Jaune swung his sword up to have it ricochet off of the bat's second attack. Negan dropped his foot down over Jaune's neck. Losing his breath, Jaune flailed his arms helplessly. Negan knocked both of his weapons away. Disarmed, Jaune had nothing to defend himself from Negan's next strike directed to the crotch area.

That is, Jaune had nothing except his thrashing arms, which he did use. He caught Lucille in his hands, the barbed wire no doubt digging into his Aura-shield skin. Jaune also tried kicking at Lucille and Negan to no avail.

Negan, his balance risking to fall apart, jumped off of Jaune. "Intuitive fucking son of a fucker, aren't you?" Jaune scrambled for his weapons only for Negan to catch him from behind.

And Negan literally caught Jaune's behind with Lucille. The fabric of Jaune's jeans must have gotten stuck with the wire. Negan dragged him across the floor for a few feet before Lucille abruptly disconnected from Jaune's butt. Jaune rolled a short distance before resting on his side.

Unsurprisingly, Negan was laughing hysterically. "Did you see that, Jauny fuck boy?"

"I felt that," Jaune sniveled, clutching his bottom with care.

"I didn't get your nuts, but I guess the butt's close enough to the nuts." After finishing up his feverish sniggers, Negan raised Lucille over Jaune. Jaune, to Ruby's complete understanding, entered the fetal position. Negan started screaming, "Now, let's see if you've got any guts! What do you say, Jauny boy?! Let's find out together!"

The moments where Negan got a little scary and a little creepy were few and far in between, but Ruby had to relent that they were still there. At least he was more happy and weird than scary and creepy most of the time.

Before Jaune could cry out in horror or before Lucille could make contact with him, Professor Goodwitch called the match. "That's enough," she commanded. Negan froze in place with Lucille centimeters away from Jaune's abdomen. "It's obvious Mister Winchester, as uncouth as he may be, has won the match."

"Fuck yeah I did," Negan applauded himself, resting Lucille on his shoulder as he liked to. He bent his knees slightly and thrust his pelvic area up into the air at an angle. "A pleasant as punch win for little, ol' fuckable me."

As if on cue, the school bell rang out. The students still remained in their seats, waiting for the Professor to give them permission to leave. "Negan Winchester will be staying behind so that we may discuss his… recent performance. The rest of you," Goodwitch appeared to send a glare to Negan's way. Jaune was trying to crawl away from Negan, who was swaying Jaune's discarded broadsword dangerously close, "may leave."

The class dispersed and departed from the dueling arena. RWBY and JNPR, with Pyrrha supporting Jaune until he decided he could walk on his own, went through the same exit. Teams NBLS and PMPR joined them down the corridor. Between Ruby, Negan, and Jaune striking up an unlikely friendship, Whitley and Weiss being siblings, Yang and Philip dating, and Ruby, Neo, Nora, and Merle hoarding all the sweetened food during Sunday brunches, it was inevitable for the four new teams to spend more time with one another during their stay in Beacon. On their way to their next class, conversations between them soon followed.

"Seriously, Rosey," Merle said as he neared Ruby, "those were some good moves back there. Guess that means you really are good enough for Beacon."

Yang cut between them before Ruby could respond. "Hey, what did I say? No flirting with my sister. At all. Ever."

"We were just trying to have a conversation, Yang," Ruby groaned, rolling her eyes, "and that was just mid-battle banter from before. Everyone does it all the time."

Merle chuckled at the sisters' disagreement. "Now, don't you worry your purty yellow head, blondie. There's better game out there than our little Rosey." He made what Ruby liked to call "goo-goo eyes" at some of the female members of their little group, namely Blake and Pyrrha. "I've already got my eye on a few."

It was Yang's turn to roll her eyes, but she also had a telltale smirk. "I can lend you a hand in catching some tail."

"Eh, not really into mutts or pussies," Merle said, matching her smirk. "I like 'em tall and tailless."

Yang and Merle went back and forth in their little exchange of bad puns and racially insensitive slurs. They were being low-key about it, aware of the occasional Faunus student they were passing by. Ruby couldn't say she enjoyed or approved of the puns or slurs, even if their resident Faunus Rowan insisted that she didn't mind the use of slurs in jokes between friends, so Ruby distanced herself from the two.

Weiss, Whitley, and Pyrrha were wrapped in a conversation about Pyrrha's previous bouts in the Mistral combat tournaments. Nora was rambling to Ren, Rowan, Martinez, and Neo – and Neo was eating another cone of ice cream. Seriously, was generating ice cream cones her semblance? – about another dream she had had. Blake secluded herself at the back corner of their group. She was still reading as she walked, the bow on her head fluttering softly.

That left Morgan, Jaune, and Philip at the front. Ruby moved to join them.

"Yeah, it was a shame, what happened to Carl," Philip, hands in his pockets, was saying to Morgan. "Is his dad taking care of him?"

"Of course he is," Morgan replied. "Rick Grimes is an honest man. He's actually pretty popular guy to folks in downtown Vale."

"I think I've heard of Rick Grimes," Jaune commented, scratching his behind when he thought no one was looking. "Grimes is the town sheriff, or commissioner or something, right?"

"The term is constable," Morgan corrected him. "Constable Rick Grimes. He's done a lot of good for Vale. Even Carl's trying to pitch in."

Ruby chose at that moment to join the conversation. "Wait, Morgan, you know Carl Grimes?"

Morgan nodded in confirmation. "Our dads go way back. My dad helped his get set up in Vale after whatever happened back at Signal. Carl and I were roommates for a while till the Grimes got their own place."

"Wow, that's really nice of your dad." Ruby was planning on heading to Tuskon's book shop in Vale at some point with Blake to try to get to know her silent teammate better. Maybe she should schedule that trip sooner rather than later. "How's Carl doing? We used to keep up with each other after he left Patch, but then we kinda… lost touch." It wasn't Ruby's fault that Carl stopped answering his Scroll when she sent a text or called, or when their other friends tried contacting him.

Speaking of them, Ruby needs to send the gang at Signal another letter soon. It has to be a handwritten letter, too. If Weiss had anything to say about it, Ruby's handwriting wasn't going to get better on its own.

"He does a lot of odd jobs for folks in downtown," Morgan said. "Repairing AC units, pitching in at the homeless shelter, that sort of thing. 'Wants to help contribute,' he says, since he can't be a Huntsman anymore."

Ruby's spirit was disheartened by that fact. If anyone was a consistent student at a Huntsmen Academy, it was Carl getting straight B's in his classes while Ruby's had a mix of A's, B's, and C's. It was more than a shame that Carl had to be expelled.

"It's good to know Carl's keeping busy and doing some good," Philip spoke, rejuvenating Ruby's mood somewhat. "Becoming a cop is the next best thing to becoming a Hunter. Don't you think so, Ruby?"

"Definitely. I mean, Huntresses are so epic and awesome and cool, but the police are still good at helping out people!" Carl's dad used to be a simple deputy on Patch. He must have really moved up in the world after his divorce. "But Huntresses get to fight Grimm and travel the world on missions! But I know the police are important for keeping the peace and stuff." A quick thought ran by her head, and Ruby spoke without thinking about it. "Then again, Maggie's dad owns one of the biggest farms in the Kingdom. Farming's still useful since everyone has to eat. Farmers might do the most good instead, but then both Huntsmen and police can protect the farmers, so –"

Philip gave that obnoxious brotherly ruffle of Ruby's hair with his hand. "You're rambling again, Ruby." He laughed off Ruby's attempts to shove him aside, but he let her do so in the end. "I'd have thought you'd grown out of that by now."

Ruby pouted at Philip, and at Jaune and Morgan who were smiling goodheartedly alongside him. Part of the problem with being enrolled at Beacon early was all the teasing her new friends were giving her. Ruby's old friends mostly took all of her "childish" mannerisms in stride, but everyone at Beacon seemed to have an unspoken obligation to poke fun at those mannerisms. It was getting tiresome, to say the least.

"Don't feel so bad, Ruby," said Jaune, whose smile was less teasing and more sympathetic. "I've got a sister that's twice my age, and if you even hint at a topic she's passionate about, she's going to be talking nonstop for as long as she can breathe. Rambling's not something limited to age is what I'm saying."

While Ruby was grateful for Jaune's words, she was a little perplexed at the mention of his sister. "I thought you said your sister only just learned how to walk when you left for Beacon."

"Wait," Morgan said, "is this the same sister who moved to Atlas, or the sister who's pregnant and staying close to home?"

"I thought your sister was already a Huntress, Jaune," Philip chimed in. "Didn't you say she went on a mission with her team in Mountain Glenn recently?"

Overwhelmed by the staggering number of questions, Jaune had to unknot his tongue-tied lips to answer them. "I've actually got seven sisters in all."

"Seven sisters?" Ruby's eyes widened at that number. She couldn't imagine living with more than one sibling, even if they weren't as much as a handful as Yang could get. "How do you have seven sisters?"

Philip laughed and moved his hand over Ruby's head. "I think you're a little young to want to know about the –"

"The birds and the bees," Ruby interrupted, annoyed, slapping Philip's hand away. "I know what they are, and I wasn't asking about that." Ruby counted herself lucky not to be blushing at the mention of birds and bees. Her talks with Negan must be little by little desensitizing her embarrassment and self-consciousness toward such things.

Jaune was still a little embarrassed when the birds and bees were mentioned, if the red appearing on his face meant anything. "It's not like I ask why my parents decided to have seven daughters and one son. It just, uh, sorta happened."

"You said seven sisters," Morgan spoke up, more curious than anything. "You've talked about five of them before. Who're the last two?"

"The twins." Jaune's face brightened as he mentioned them. "They're in fourth grade. Smart for their age, too." He patted his palm against the armored plates he wore over his hoodie. "They like to draw. They actually sketched the design for my armor. It was… more cartoonish before, but my parents know a blacksmith in Vale and he spruced this up for me."

"You mean Earl Sutton?" Morgan and Ruby asked at in synchronization. The two looked at each other. Earl Sutton was an old Huntsman buddy Ruby's dad and Uncle Qrow worked with back in the day. He came to Patch as a guest lecturer every now and then. "Carl does odd jobs for him, too," Morgan said in his explanation for how he knew Sutton. "Carl might not be training to be a Hunter, but he sure knows his way around a Hunter's weapon." Morgan gestured to the assault rifle slung over his shoulder.

Philip sighed audibly. "It's such a waste. You'd think with Grimm on our doorsteps day and night, the folks up top would take anyone who's able and willing to be a Huntsman."

"Everyone has to pay their dues somehow," Morgan shrugged, making Ruby look unapprovingly at him.

"It wasn't Carl's fault for what happened," Ruby argued. "It was Russel's and his stupid friends' fault."

Philip glanced at Ruby, training his good eye on her. "It was Carl's choice to do what he did, Ruby, and he's taken responsibility for it."

"Has Russel? Carl was," Ruby's head churned for the right word she was looking for, "coerced into it. Forced to, bullied to do it."

"Doesn't change the fact that he let it happen."

And where were you, Ruby wanted to ask, but she knew Philip would then ask her the same question, and her answer would probably the same as his: I didn't even know about it until after it happened.

"Guys," Jaune spoke, "I kinda feel like I'm a little out of the loop here. What was it that was so bad that Carl had to be expelled from Signal Academy?"

Ruby was about to explain how Russel was a dirty, lying son of a gun and how Carl was completely innocent when a cry of annoying, boisterous chuckling sounded off behind them. Ruby would recognize that despicable voice anywhere. She turned around to give the stink eye at Russel. "Carl was a little bitch," he said nonchalantly. "He got caught and couldn't weasel his way out of it. Philip's right, Rose. It was his own fault for getting expelled."

Before Ruby could maim Russel with Crescent Rose, someone beat her to the punch. Russel ducked his head as a hand slapped itself against the back of it. "Hey, what the fuck were we just discussing? You and your team's fucking piss-poor manners, that's what. Live and learn, asshole."

Negan ensnared Russel in his arm. Russel tried to get away, but Cardin came up on Russel's other side and elbowed his arm. The two CRDL members challenged glares at one another before Russel conceded and turned away first, bitterly letting Negan drag him along. Sky and Dove, looking vaguely like they didn't want to be here, were trailing right behind them.

"You keep talking shit all the time like some wannabe macho badass," Negan was saying, "maybe I'll have Cardin run a train on you. You know he would. He's my cousin. He's family, and there ain't shit you can't or won't do for family."

Run a train on him? What did that mean?

"Excuse you!" That was Weiss, shrieking from where she was ambling beside Pyrrha. Ruby rolled her eyes again. Weiss was almost as frustrating as Yang when it came to intolerance with Negan. At least the last of Ruby's team, Blake, just outright ignores him. "Are you implying that you would order Cardin to – to – to engage in –"

"Of course fucking not!" Somehow, Negan looked even more insulted than Weiss. "It's called a fucking joke. Ever heard of one before? Geez, sister, what crawled up your ass and died from hypothermia?"

"Too many things, partner," Whitley said offhandedly, flashing Negan a knowing smirk. Ruby chalked that up to an inside joke. "Too many things." Hopefully, Ruby will be able to have inside jokes with Weiss sometime in the near future.

"Whitley!" Weiss hissed to her brother in an attempt to shush him. "Do not encourage that ruffian!"

"Yeah, real funny joke," Russel muttered. "You mind getting the hell off of me?"

Negan obliged, stepping away. "Well, since you asked so nicely you soulless, boring fuck."

Jaune coughed into his hand. "Uh, no offense Negan, but… why is Team CRDL here?" Jaune was staring warily at Cardin, understandably so since Cardin liked to pick on Jaune especially. Negan might hang out with Cardin from time to time since they were cousins, but CRDL and NBLS were rarely paired together when RWBY or JNPR were nearby. Ruby could see Blake and Pyrrha already giving the bullies scowls.

"I am so glad that you asked, Jauny boy!" Negan declared. He outstretched his arms, resting one hand on Jaune's shoulder and his other hand on Cardin's. "You see, during these past few weeks, I have come to an undeniable conclusion."

"… What conclusion?" Jaune asked finally with mistrust in his voice.

"You are a fucking pussy," Negan declared firmly, "and not in the racist sort of way." He sent a look towards Blake, who was narrowing her eyes at him. Blake was the most vocal about Faunus civil rights among them. "Just so that Miss Mellowdonna knows, I'm talking about the pre-Great War type of pussies, the cowards and the criers who aren't worth fucking and are better off getting fucked. You understand me, Jaune?"

"Should… Should I be offended?"

"No, you shouldn't be offended. Everyone should be offended, because everyone here is a fucking pussy." Not for the first time since the school year started, all eyes locked onto Negan. "Yeah, that's right. You are all fucking pussies – not the derogatory pussy meant for Faunus, let me remind you, but the fucking crybaby kind of pussy that wets the bed so much that your roommates think you're masturbating all the time."

"Excuse you!" Weiss screeched again.

"Please, Negan," Pyrrha added, trying to be as disarming and polite as possible, "there's no need for such coarse language."

"Not that there's anything wrong with masturbating," Negan clarified, clearly ignoring Weiss and Pyrrha. "We've all got needs that sometimes a good fuck alone can't solve, but in this case, every single one of you desperately needs a good, hot, orgasmic fucking fuck of your fucking lifetime."

"Oh, oh!" Nora shouted joyfully, wrapping her arms around her silent partner from behind him. "Dibs on Rennie!"

"No thanks, Nora," was all Ren said, "but what exactly are you talking about, Negan?" Ruby liked Ren. He was quiet, but that made it all the more important to pay attention when he actually spoke.

"I was just about to ask the same thing," Philip said. He and Negan made eye contact. They were having another one of their smiling, analytical stare-downs, exactly like the one they had shared when the two had first met. Ruby wasn't sure why they were so benignly distrustful of one another. You would think that two easy-going guys like them would become quick friends instead of doing this.

"Let me answer that by asking another question," Negan said. He pointed a finger at Ruby. "Miss Rose, what is it that we as students of Beacon Academy hope to accomplish once we graduate and become fully-fledged Huntresses and Huntsmen?"

The answer was obvious. Ruby and Negan have discussed this many times before. "To save the world from Grimm!" Ruby cheered with her fist bumping up into the air.

"Exactly! To save the world." Negan dashed to the front of their little congregation. Facing the crowd of students, he had his arms stretched wide and was walking backwards. "And who are we saving it for?"

"The people of Remnant!" Ruby announced.

"And another point goes to Ruby." The two team leaders exchanged a high-five. "Assuming that we are all natives born and raised on Remnant, that means we are saving the world for each other. We are fighting for all of humanity and all of the Faunus. We are fighting for the greatest damn fucking good the world will ever know. We are taking Grimm by the ass and driving it so far up the ass that–"

"Hey, slick!" Merle called from the rear of the group. "You got a point you're trying to make here?"

"My point is the tip of my giant fucking dick," Negan shouted at Merle, "and it knows that all of your dicks… and vaginas for you lovely ladies… are too busy praying and sweating to let some other assholes into the orgy. Case in point," Negan gestured to Team CRDL. "You understand, Jauny boy?"

"I, uh, um, uh…" Jaune's stuttering trailed off into inaudibility. He pleadingly whispered to Ruby, "What is he saying?"

"No cheating, Jauny!" Negan reprimanded. "You get one point for putting up a good fight earlier, but Ruby's got three points for her performance thus far today. You don't get any hints from her."

"But I want to help Jaune!" Ruby whined. She always liked giving a helping hand to friends in need.

"Nope!"

"But –"

"Nope!"

"But I -"

"You don't have to help him, Ruby," Philip piped in, still staring at Negan. "I think what Negan's trying to say is that we as a group should hang out with Team CRDL more."

At that, Ruby lost some of her playful attitude. "What?"

"Somebody give One-Eyed Philly a fucking gold medal," Negan professed with bow towards Philip, "because he just found the answer to all of your fucking problems!"

"… What was the problem again?" Jaune asked. "Because, no offense, but I'm still lost here."

Negan opened his mouth to remind Jaune, but Ruby cut in. "The problem is that Team CRDL is made up of a bunch of bullies" She glowered again at a jeering Russel. "Why should we spend more time with them?"

"That's half a point to you, Ruby," Negan said to her, "because you're only half right." With a snap of his fingers and a whistling tune, Negan motioned to Cardin. "My cousin and his precious team may be bullies, but do you know what else they are?"

"Discourteous ruffians," Weiss said easily with the air of the pampered heiress that she was.

"Racist bigots," Blake murmured, still mostly enamored by her book.

"A bunch of purty boys in fancy armor," Merle gave in his two cents, "probably compensating for sumthing."

"Walking pairs of legs, waiting to be broken!" Nora said gleefully.

"All-around jerks to everybody?" Jaune said while mimicking Nora's delight. He tried to laugh off his answer, but he stopped abruptly when he caught CRDL glaring at him. "Uh, never mind."

"… Atrocious hooligans," Pyrrha suggested quietly, her eyes darkening.

Neo snapped her fingers so everyone would watch as she gave her answer. She signed it with her hands instead of writing it down on her scroll for display. Negan and Morgan were the only other ones in their group who knew sign language, so whatever message Neo conveyed could only be understood by those two. It must have been an interesting one since Morgan face-palmed and Negan winked at his girlfriend.

"They're still bullies!" Ruby reminded everyone, even if that was basically what everyone had said.

Whitley cleared his throat. "I believe what Negan is trying to get across is that Team CRDL consists of Huntsmen-in-training, the same as our own teams."

Negan clapped his hands as he hopped up and down. "That just earned you two more points, partner! You get one for getting it right, and another for getting it right on your first try!"

"What are you keeping score for?" Yang asked, but she was also ignored by him.

"I'll admit it," Negan said, "Team CRDL are assholes. Isn't that right, cousin?"

Cardin, with an unbreakable poker face, nodded in confirmation. "That's right. I'm an asshole," he deadpanned before elbowing Russel again.

"Yeah, we're assholes," Russel snarked flippantly. "God forbid that we're surrounded by pussies, like how Negan just pointed out, but yeah, we're assholes." Sky and Dove said something similar along those lines.

"But asshole does not automatically equate to a soulless Grimm," Negan continued his speech. "More often than not, asshole equates to a humanoid person with a soul lurking inside of them, and we as future Hunters have to acknowledge that we are probably going to have to save some assholes during the process of saving the world. Not everyone's a goody-goody two-shoes, after all. It's statistically impossible."

"I disagree!" Ruby yelped. That was one argument that Ruby and Negan couldn't find common ground on, of whether there were more good people in the world than bad, and she hasn't lost that argument yet!

"And I disagree with you, Ruby," Negan said without missing a beat, "but if some of the people that we're saving – and if some of the people that we will have to work with while saving those people – happen to be assholes… what should we all be doing to fix this problem? What's the solution?"

"I know! I know!" Nora squealed, raising her hand as she sprang upwards. "We round up those assholes, have them dig the holes, break their legs, and let the rain bury the graves! No one will know who did it!"

"Minus five points for Nora," Negan awarded to her.

"What?! Why?"

"Because that's just the same fucking dream you had last week, Nora, but instead of assholes, it was a pack of Ursa Grimm you buried. What did I just say? These assholes aren't Grimm, so minus five points for not paying attention."

Nora frowned and crossed her arms. Ren sighed as he draped his fingers through his hair. "Please don't encourage her," he pleaded. "Nora gets very competitive when there's a point system involved."

"Good. That means she better try harder to fucking earn them. Now, who thinks they know what the solution is to our asshole problem?"

Uh, Negan can be almost as bad as dad sometimes. Dad didn't always outright answer a question Ruby or Yang asked him. He asked them more questions, making his daughters ask more questions, and then it was more and more questions, all to hopefully lead Ruby or Yang to discover the answers for themselves. Dad claims that it's a legitimate parenting strategy, but it's more exasperating than anything. Why can't dad make his point right off the bat instead of beating around the bush and making Ruby find it on her own?

Luckily, Negan was more lenient in giving away the answer. He was more open to bargaining than dad ever was.

"Can I trade my points in for the solution, Negan?" Ruby asked him. "Pretty, pretty please, with Neopolitan on top?" Adding that last bit with Neo to a "pretty, pretty please" usually got Negan to relent. If it got him to lower his eyes, lick his lips, and let his two front teeth show as he smiled, like how he was doing now, it usually meant that he was going to say yes.

"I suppose, since you asked so nicely…"

Ruby could feel the enmity radiating off of Yang from a few feet away. The younger of the sisters rolled her eyes again, and in that split second when Ruby's eyes were off of Negan, she felt him latch onto her wrist. He dragged her a few steps to press her palm against someone else's hand. The other hand was almost twice the size as Ruby's. Her gaze followed the hand to the arm to the shoulder and then to Cardin's distasteful frown.

"The solution is," Negan exclaimed, his fingers still clasped on the two team leaders' wrists, "we all stop being assholes. Now, we all start being friends!" He rattled with enough force to shake Ruby's arm, though Cardin's arm remained relatively still. "Let's shake on it!"

"Wait, be friends?" Jaune asked, comprehension sinking in. "You mean, all of us hanging out with… with Team CRDL?"

"Do you think I fucking stuttered, Jauny boy, or some shit like that?" Ah, Ruby noted with the pass of cool air passing through her shoulders, Negan was getting a teeny bit scary again. She could feel his hold tighten, revealing some of his impatience and aggression. "Hell to the fuck to the fucking hell no, I did not stutter. All sides forgive and forget, and we all make amends. We – and by we, I mean all of you humpty dumpty cock-suckers who are unlucky enough to not be on Team Motherfucking Negan – stop being assholes to CRDL, and CRDL stops being assholes to everyone, human or Faunus," a wink was sent Blake and Rowan's way, "in this fucking school."

Weiss, hands pressed against her hips, huffed and puffed and stuck her nose up in the air. "I think every single one of us here has better things to do than to affiliate ourselves with such so-called Huntsmen-in-training."

"Of course you'd think so, sister," Whitley remarked with his own eye roll.

"Am I wrong to say so, dear brother?"

"Yes you fucking are, Princess," Negan answered for his partner. "I thought you were supposed to be well-educated with all that Schnee lien flowing in. Ever been taught on how to win hearts and minds, friends and influence? You are doing a piss-poor job of getting any of those fucking things."

Ruby weaseled herself out of Negan's and Cardin's grips. "I'm sorry, Negan, but there's no way on Remnant that I'm going to be friends with him." Ruby stuck her tongue out at Russel's stupid hair. He was refusing to even face in her direction now.

"Now, now, Ruby," Negan began in a lecturing tone too reminiscent of dad's, or Uncle Qrow's, or even Yang's when she was in her be-a-good-role-model-for-my-innocent-little-sister mode.

Philip stepped in. "Hold up. Hold up, now." He moved in front of Ruby and let his hands fall onto the Winchester cousins' backsides. "Negan is making some very good points. His and my teams have never had a problem with CRDL. It's always RWBY and JNPR that's had a problem with them."

"That's because they're bullies!" Ruby and Jaune said together.

"And that bullying would stop if you two make some peace with Russel and Cardin," Philip explained, tilting his head toward the aforementioned CRDL members. "That is, if Russel and Cardin are willing to make some peace with you two."

Negan laughed. "What do you think I've been talking about with my cousin lately, Philly? Trust me when I say that they are ready and willing to bend over in the name of friendship."

"Is that so?" That was Pyrrha, a new curious light in her eyes. "Then would Team CRDL please apologize for their terrible treatment towards Jaune?"

Negan laughed again, pointing a finger at the redhead. "Oh, that's on the to-do list, but I have something better in mind."

The five teams soon reached their destination. Half of the seats in the classroom were filled and occupied by Beacon students of varying years. Team Dynamics was a class that transcended seniority at the school, after all. Professor Eastman seemed to be running late again, though.

The group of friends – plus CRDL, because Ruby wasn't counting Russel's teams as friends just yet – sat near one of the older teams, Team CFVY. It was the same team that that one rabbit Faunus, Velvet, was in. Cardin had been bullying her on the day after initiation. Negan pushed Cardin to walk to Velvet, and Cardin urged Ruby and the others to watch.

CFVY had caught on fast that the Winchesters were quickly approaching, but Velvet motioned to her team to relax. She eyed Cardin with a firm, solid look as he stood before her.

"Is there something you need from me?" Velvet asked with that forced neutrality that Ruby couldn't tell if it was suppressing either anxiety or resentment, but what Cardin said next knocked that neutrality into utter shock.

"I am deeply sorry for my team and I having been so rude to you over the last few weeks," Cardin enunciated with a slow, patient pace. "It was narrow-minded and uncalled for. I apologize."

A bully was actually apologizing to someone he had been bullying? Ruby ought to give Negan more credit! For someone who thinks there's more bad than good in the world, he can sure make a bad guy into a good one!

Velvet, as hesitant as she may be, appeared to accept the apology. "I… Thank you? No, yes. Thank you for the… apology." She raised an eyebrow at Cardin. "What's brought this on?" she questioned.

"It looks like we're going to both be in this Academy for a while until your team graduates," Cardin said, straight-faced as ever. He sounded a little dull, yet he still sounded honest. Honest! An honest bully! Who would have thought? "I don't want our stay here to be any more uncomfortable or awkward than it needs to be."

"I… I can see your point," Velvet decided to say. She goes for the polite smile that Ruby is all-too familiar with. "Let bygones be bygones, right? Thank you."

Visibly satisfied, Cardin moved to leave. Ruby was just about ready to accept him into the fold, after he apologizes to Jaune of course. However, Negan stopped Cardin in his tracks. Negan whispered into his cousin's ear, and Cardin turned went to Velvet. This time, there was a horribly forced smile on his face. It was like Jaune's "smooth" smile and induced a similar effect of disbelief to the person the smile was directed at.

"To show how serious I am with my apology," Cardin went on, "if you'd like… I think it would be enjoyable… to screw your brains out."

And then the awkward silence that Ruby longs to avoid in social gatherings settles itself into the classroom.

Everyone in the classroom was staring at Cardin now. Everyone.

Except for Ruby. She was looking at Negan. Ruby knew it was Negan who pressured Cardin to make that offer, and Negan looked as ecstatic as could be.

"I mean, if, you know... if you were agreeable to it."

Velvet slapped Cardin across the face.

Negan jumped in to steer Cardin out of slapping distance. While Cardin sauntered off to his team, Negan tried giving Velvet a reassuring smile. "Nice one, Velvet. Just so you know, I think that Cardin's about fifty percent more into you now." Velvet's body shook in the same way Jaune's body shook during his spar today. "Fifty percent more into you. Definitely. Just saying."

Ruby wished Russel was Negan's cousin instead. She would have paid real money to see Russel apologize and get promptly slapped like that.

She wouldn't accept Russel as a friend afterward, though. Not by a longshot.


End file.
